Google CEO Sundar Pichai makes an ‘Apple announcement’ under oath, tells court: Tim Cook was trying to....

Google's AI chatbot Gemini will soon be integrated into Siri, CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed under oath Wednesday, telling the court that negotiations with Apple to integrate its AI chatbot into Apple’s OS’ are expected to be done by mid-2025.

"Correct," Pichai testified when Department of Justice lawyer Veronica Onyema asked about plans to integrate Gemini into Apple's devices. The testimony came during ongoing antitrust proceedings examining Google's search dominance.

Pichai revealed he held discussions with Apple CEO Tim Cook about AI development and distribution. "He [Cook] was trying to understand our plans for how we're evolving AI technologies, our roadmap, and as part of that, we talked about the Gemini app distribution as well," Pichai stated.

The Google CEO further stated that Cook indicated more third-party AI models would be incorporated into Apple Intelligence later in 2025.

Siri’s Gemini integration rumored to be in the discussions since last year

Bloomberg first reported on talks between Apple and Google regarding Gemini integration in March 2024. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, discussions between the two companies have remained active, with a deal expected to be finalized at some point.

The integration would enhance Apple's AI capabilities, allowing Siri to leverage Gemini for handling complex queries, similar to its current ChatGPT integration. Signs of the upcoming partnership were spotted in February when references to "Google" as an Apple Intelligence model choice appeared in an iOS 18.4 beta, as reported by MacRumors.

Apple executive had hinted at a Google-Apple partnership previously

Apple previously signaled openness to such a partnership. At last year's Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple's senior vice president Craig Federighi siad, "We want to enable users ultimately to choose the models they want, maybe Google Gemini in the future." He later confirmed, "We're looking forward to doing integrations with other models, including Google Gemini, for instance, in the future."

For Google, securing this partnership would represent a significant expansion of Gemini's reach across billions of Apple devices. The companies have a longstanding relationship, with Google providing YouTube as a standalone iPhone app since 2007. The company also serves as the default search engine in Safari, the default internet browsing app on Apple devices. This has long been a matter of concern for the US government and is also the reason why Pichai was summoned to court.

Pichai’s “mid-2025” completion comment suggests that a formal announcement could be expected at Apple's developer conference in early June, where the company also announced its partnership with OpenAI last year. This is also the time when Apple traditionally unveils new versions of its operating systems. The company may also include other LLMs into Apple Intelligence.


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