Siri's Gemini Future

Reports this week suggest Apple is planning to use Google's Gemini to power the next version of Siri. I've been spending time with an Oppo Find X9 Pro recently, and the gap between what Gemini can do and what Siri manages is vast.

Gemini works the way Siri was supposed to work back in 2011. You ask something, it pulls information from your apps and the web, and gives you an answer that actually helps. There's no "here's what I found on the web" redirect. No awkward handoff. It just does the thing.

When I ask the same questions on my iPhone, Siri punts them to ChatGPT. It takes forever and usually comes back with something wrong. I'm not sure if that's a limitation of ChatGPT or Apple's integration, but either way it's miles behind what Google's doing.

The bigger problem is that even if Apple does partner with Gemini, I'm not convinced it'll make much difference. The current ChatGPT integration already suffers from too much processing, too many handovers, too much waiting. You can feel Siri trying to work out what to do before it even attempts to give you an answer.

Gemini works because it's built by Google and sits at the centre of everything Google does. It’s just search, and simplicity and level of integration makes it fast and reliable. If Apple bolts Gemini on the same way they've done with ChatGPT, it'll still be a slow and inconsistent mess. With Android you give up some level of privacy and in return receive a service that is much more helpful.

Apple keeps talking about privacy and on-device intelligence, which sounds great until you realise the result is an assistant that doesn't actually assist. Gemini feels like part of the phone. It's aware of your apps and data without being creepy about it. It's helpful in the way Siri should have been a decade ago.

If Apple really does end up leaning on Google to make Siri useful again, that feels more like admission of defeat than a solution. I'd love to see Apple build something of its own that works as well as Gemini does today. Right now, Siri is the weakest part of owning an iPhone and unfortunately I am starting to feel like Apple can’t fix this problem.