The Information has published a report with interesting tidbits about Apple’s partnership with Google, which will have Gemini serve as the foundation for its AI features, including the new Siri. Here are the details.
In-house finetuning, no Google or Gemini branding
Yesterday’s joint announcement that Apple had decided to rely on Gemini to power its AI features was light on technical specifics.
The companies stated that Apple’s Gemini-based features “will continue to run on Apple devices and Private Cloud Compute,” which means that Google won’t have access to user data by design, but that was it.
Today, The Information published an interesting look at some aspects of the partnership, including the fact that Apple will be able to adjust its version of the Gemini model independently:
Apple can ask Google to tweak aspects of how the Gemini model works, but otherwise Apple can finetune Gemini on its own so that it responds to queries the way Apple prefers, the person involved in the project said.
The report also partly answers a question that multiple people have been either asking themselves or speculating about when it comes to how prominent the Google branding will be throughout the experience:
In the current prototype of Apple’s Gemini-based system, AI answers don’t include any branding related to Google or Gemini, this person said.
Although the final experience may change from the current implementation, this partly echoes a Bloomberg report from late last year, in which Mark Gurman said:
I don’t expect either company to ever discuss this partnership publicly, and you shouldn’t expect this to mean Siri will be flooded with Google services or Gemini features already found on Android devices. It just means Siri will be powered by a model that can actually provide the AI features that users expect — all with an Apple user interface.
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