Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke publicly for the first time on Thursday about the collaboration with Google that will upgrade the Siri voice assistant with the Gemini AI. He emphasized that the new Siri will “maintain our industry-leading privacy standards.”
Cook also said the company will continue to develop its own artificial intelligence models, even as it’s using Google’s.
Tim Cook: Apple AI ‘creates great value’
Over the past few years, Apple’s efforts to build competitive AI technology repeatedly fell short of rivals like Google and OpenAI, with its long-promised Apple Intelligence features and upgrades to Siri lagging in capabilities and facing lengthy delays. As expectations for powerful generative assistants rose, Apple’s own models — far smaller and less capable than those of competitors — are simply unable to deliver credible AI performance. So it made the unusual move of partnering with Google to integrate Gemini AI into a revamped Siri, as well as other features of iPhone, Mac and iPad.
After announcing record quarterly revenue and profits on Thursday, Apple’s CEO held a conference call with investors, and artificial intelligence came up repeatedly — not surprisingly.
When asked why Google was chosen to provide AI for the iPhone and other devices, instead of a rival like OpenAI or Anthropic, Cook said, “We basically determined that Google’s AI technology would provide the most capable foundation for AFM — Apple Foundation Models. And we believe that we can unlock a lot of experiences and innovate in a key way.”
One analyst pointed out that plenty of Androids already have AI built in, and it hasn’t done much to spur sales. (iPhone, in contrast, led the 2025 global handset market.) The analyst wanted to know what Apple would do differently.
“We’re bringing [artificial] intelligence to more of what people love, and we’re integrating it across the operating system in a personal and private way,” said the Apple CEO. “And I think that by doing so, it creates great value, and that opens up a range of opportunities across our products and services.”
Apple’s AI deal for Google Gemini isn’t a privacy nightmare
Google is first and foremost an advertising company, and its business involves building profiles on people for use in targeted ads. iPhone users are concerned that Google will use Siri to violate their privacy.
Tim Cook took pains on Thursday to try and calm those concerns. Whenever he answered an analyst’s question about the AI deal between Apple and Google, he always brought up privacy.
For example, when asked about whether Apple’s AI features would run on users’ devices or on remote Apple servers, Cook said, “We’ll continue to run on the device and run in Private Cloud Compute… and maintain our industry-leading privacy standards in doing so.”
Private Cloud Compute is a network of remote servers on which user data is used only to fulfill the current request and is never stored or accessible to Apple or others.
Apple isn’t giving up AI research
Cook’s comments also included a mention that Apple management didn’t grudgingly turn to Google for AI help.
“We’re very happy with the collaboration with Google,” said Cook.
Nevertheless, Apple will carry on with AI-related research and development.
“We’ll obviously independently continue to do some of our own stuff,” said the CEO.
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
