Apple’s approach to AI since the release of ChatGPT has been confused and confusing.

Its first idea was to rerelease Siri, only this time with some modest, on-device LLM models looped in. This didn’t amount to much — iOS devices aren’t much easier to talk to than they were five or, remarkably, ten years ago — creating the impression that Apple was missing the AI wave. This sense temporarily drove down the company’s stock price and led to some executive departures. This was always a bit of a strange narrative, in part because Apple, a company that makes money selling hardware and add-on services for its hardware, was never a natural competitor for the likes of OpenAI. Maybe it was behind. Maybe it was simply cautious and slow to act after overpromising with Siri and turning the product into a punch line. Maybe its leadership didn’t really have much of a plan at all.

In any case, it’s 2026, and Apple is under a lot of pressure to do something. So it returned to its closest partner — and one of its biggest competitors — in big tech:

Apple and Google have entered into a multi-year collaboration under which the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google’s Gemini models and cloud technology. These models will help power future Apple Intelligence features, including a more personalized Siri coming this year.

This is a new deal but, in a broader sense, a straightforward continuation: Apple has been........

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