Enterprise

Apple unveils Siri AI at WWDC, powered by a custom Google Gemini model

In Tim Cook's final keynote, Apple rebuilds Siri on a 1.2-trillion-parameter Gemini model and opens iOS 27 to third-party AI defaults.

By Asher Glick · Enterprise software desk · 2026-06-08 · 4 min read

Photo: Unsplash / Omid Armin — An iPhone on a desk showing a voice assistant interface

Apple announced at WWDC 2026 that its rebuilt Siri will run on a custom, roughly 1.2-trillion-parameter Gemini model licensed from Google, for which Apple is paying roughly $1 billion per year. TechCrunch called it the most dramatic transformation in Siri’s history. It’s also, structurally, an admission: the company that spent a decade positioning vertical integration as a moat has rented its flagship AI from a competitor.

The deal extends a partnership established in January 2026, under which Apple Foundation Models are built on Gemini. Apple continues running its own on-device models for privacy-sensitive tasks, but the heavy cloud lifting now belongs to Mountain View. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that internal leadership meetings turned more aggressive after executives grew concerned Apple was trailing OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and Meta. CNN noted Wall Street had been pushing for strategy clarity for the better part of a year.

The product itself ships as a standalone Siri app across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, surfacing inside the Dynamic Island with a “Search or Ask” prompt and a glowing cursor. It supports multi-step commands, image and document attachments, and persistent conversation history synced through iCloud, with auto-generated overviews of past sessions. iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 will also let users designate a third-party provider, Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini, as the default for Apple Intelligence features like Writing Tools and Image Playground. The walled garden now has a menu.

Craig Federighi framed the architecture in familiar terms, insisting “privacy in AI is non-negotiable” and that outside experts can continue to verify the company’s data-handling promises. Siri AI won’t ship in Europe or China at launch because of regulatory challenges. The developer beta opened Monday.

It was Tim Cook’s last WWDC keynote. John Ternus, currently senior vice president of hardware engineering, takes over as CEO on September 1. Cook closed with a personal coda: “the best is still ahead at Apple.”

The line lands differently when the foundation model underneath it carries a Google watermark.

Sources