Apple lines up Google to power Siri’s AI search by spring 2026

A long-delayed Siri overhaul is finally taking shape, but with a twist: Apple is testing Google’s Gemini to help turn Siri into an “answer engine,” according to Bloomberg’s detailed report on Siri search. Apple says privacy; the architecture says partnership.

Apple aims to ship the feature—internally called “World Knowledge Answers”—as part of iOS 26.4 in the spring of 2026. The plan would push Siri beyond short facts into richer, web-sourced responses that blend text, images, video, and local points of interest. It’s Apple’s most direct play yet against ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s own AI Overviews. Timing matters here.

What’s actually new

World Knowledge Answers reframes Siri as a place to ask the web, not just the phone. The interface and response style mirror the AI summary formats that have become familiar, with faster, more digestible answers the stated goal. This is not just a chatbot.

Apple has discussed extending the same system into Safari and Spotlight over time, broadening the surface area where AI answers can intercept queries. If it works, many searches never touch a traditional results page. That’s a power shift.

Evidence and architecture

Under the hood, Siri is being rebuilt around three components: a planner that interprets the request, a search layer for both the web and personal data, and a summarizer that composes the final answer. Each function is separable, which lets Apple mix and match suppliers without ceding the whole stack. Privacy is the sales pitch.

Apple is leaning toward a Google-built Gemini variant for the summarizer, running on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute to keep user information fenced off. Apple’s own Foundation Models are slated to handle on-device and personal-data search, preserving a key differentiator. The planner slot remains fluid: Apple is weighing Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and in-house options.

The money and the talent

Anthropic initially led Apple’s internal evaluations on quality, but reportedly sought more than $1.5 billion annually to power Siri. Google offered friendlier terms, and Apple moved. Price still decides.

Meanwhile, Apple’s AI bench is thinning. The Foundation Models group lost its creator, Ruoming Pang, to Meta on a package said to exceed $200 million, followed by roughly ten teammates. Additional researchers have departed to OpenAI and Anthropic. The exits drain institutional memory and slow iteration when speed is the currency.

Platform leverage in the AI era

A legal ruling this week preserved Google’s role as the default web search on Apple devices, a deal that has delivered about $20 billion a year to Apple. That cash cushion dulls the urgency to build a full web index from scratch while funding the AI turn. Distribution still rules.

Apple’s billion-plus iPhone users remain the irresistible prize. If Siri’s answer engine becomes the primary gateway for quick facts, route planning, or local lookups, default placement across Apple surfaces will be worth real money. Expect bidding for access, not unlike the historical search-bar auctions—but now for conversational answers, not just links.

The product risks and the clock

The roadmap is ambitious and still unannounced. Bloomberg pegs the Siri overhaul to iOS 26.4 in spring 2026, after a slip from earlier expectations. Apple and Google declined comment, and Apple’s iPhone 17 launch next week isn’t expected to showcase major new AI features. Schedules slip.

Even if the dates hold, answer engines inherit known failure modes: hallucinations, source opacity, and shifting summaries over time. Apple will need clear provenance, strong guardrails, and consistent behavior across identical queries. That’s harder than a demo suggests.

The bigger read

Platform economics are reasserting themselves. Apple doesn’t need to beat OpenAI or Google on pure model quality if it can orchestrate the experience, secure defaults, and insulate personal data with credible privacy boundaries. The Siri plan splits the problem into swappable parts while Apple controls the frame around them. That’s classic Apple.

If the execution lands, marketers and publishers face a slow pivot. Optimization won’t stop at blue links; it will extend to whether— and how—Apple’s summaries surface your content inside a voice reply or a compressed card. The funnel moves, and so do incentives. Prepare accordingly.

Why this matters

• Apple can monetize AI distribution without owning every model tier, shifting bargaining power toward platforms with captive audiences and away from standalone model vendors.
• If Siri intercepts more queries, brands must optimize for summarized answers and voice contexts, not just ranked links, reshaping search and content strategy.

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