Apple is reportedly developing an AI-enhanced search capability for Siri, potentially in collaboration with Google, as detailed in a report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Gurman indicates that Google is a frontrunner in assisting Apple to overhaul its voice assistant, which may involve integrating a custom Gemini model hosted on Apple’s servers.
The upcoming feature, internally referred to as “World Knowledge Answers,” is designed to enable users to search for information and obtain AI-generated summaries based on web results. This new interface is expected to incorporate text, images, videos, and points of interest, allowing it to compete with AI-driven search functionalities from other companies such as OpenAI and Perplexity.
Integrating AI search into Siri is part of Apple’s long-awaited initiative to enhance the voice assistant with features that leverage personal data and contextual information from users’ screens. The redesigned Siri aims to operate through a system that includes a planner for interpreting prompts, a search engine to comb through user data and the internet, and a summarizing feature to deliver relevant information succinctly.
According to Bloomberg, Apple and Google have reached a “formal agreement” that allows Apple to evaluate a Google-developed AI model for the summaries used in Siri. While Apple intends to utilize its own AI models for searching user data, it is also considering Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini for Siri’s planning functionalities.
Although Apple is set to unveil its iPhone 17 lineup next week, the AI-enhanced version of Siri is projected to launch alongside iOS 16.4, potentially as early as March of next year.
