De Euronews com AP
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Apple will rely on Google to help complete its efforts to make its Siri virtual assistant smarter and bring other artificial intelligence (AI) features to the iPhone as the trendsetting company looks to regain ground in the latest technology craze.
The agreement, which allows Apple to use Google’s AI technology, was announced on Monday in a joint statement by the Silicon Valley giants. The partnership will build on Google’s Gemini technology to customize a suite of AI features, called “Apple Intelligence,” on iPhone and other products.
After Google and others took an early lead in the AI race, Apple promised to take the first big step in the area with a set of new features expected to arrive on the iPhone in 2024 as part of a much-hyped software update.
But many of Apple’s AI features remain in development, while Google and Samsung have been rolling out more technology in their own devices.
Among the most obvious gaps in the iPhone is the promised redesign of Siri, which should transform the often confusing assistant into a more conversational and versatile assistant, capable of performing multiple tasks.
Google even subtly poked fun at the iPhone’s AI limitations in ads promoting the launch of its latest Pixel phone last summer.
Apple’s stumbles in AI led the company to recognize last year that the Siri update will only happen sometime in 2026.
Getting Apple’s approval for its AI implicitly represents a triumph for Google, which has been launching more features based on Gemini technology in its search engine and Gmail.
The progress has intensified Google’s competition with OpenAI and its ChatGPT chatbot, which already has an agreement with Apple that makes it an option on the iPhone.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives called the deal with Apple a “moment of great validation for Google” in a note published on Monday.
Google’s forays into AI have helped its parent company, Alphabet Inc., become slightly more valuable than Apple, as measured by investors. Alphabet marked a milestone on Monday by surpassing, for the first time, a market value of 4 billion dollars (€3.4 billion).
Still, Alphabet’s market value remained around $150 billion (€128.5 billion) above that of Apple, which for years led as the world’s most valuable company, before the rise of AI changed the competitive landscape.
Three more companies have joined the $4 billion (€3.4 billion) club over the past year, with AI chipmaker Nvidia becoming the first last July. Apple and Microsoft also crossed the threshold last year, although the market values of these two long-time rivals are now below $4 billion (€3.4 billion).
Nvidia’s market value briefly surpassed $5 billion (€4.29 billion) at the end of October, before retreating in the face of recurring fears that the hundreds of billions of dollars flowing into AI technology could be generating an investment bubble that will eventually burst. With its AI-designed chipsets still in strong demand, Nvidia remains at the top, with a market value of $4.5 billion (€3.86 billion).
Alphabet’s share price has been soaring since early September, when Google fended off the US government’s attempt to dismantle its internet empire, following a ruling last year that classified its ubiquitous search engine as an illegal monopoly.
To prevent further abuse, the federal judge overseeing the case ordered a reshuffle that investors largely interpreted as a relative reprimand, resulting in a 57 percent rise in Alphabet’s share price since then, which added $1.4 billion (€1.2 billion) to shareholders’ wealth.
The decision also left the door open for the long-running search alliance between Google and Apple. Google pays Apple more than $20 billion (€17.14 billion) a year to be the preferred search engine on the iPhone and other Apple products, an arrangement that continues to be permitted, with some modifications, under the judge’s ruling in the search case.
