TECH NEWS – The head of Twitter, Tesla, and xAI is unhappy that the Cupertino giant is rebuilding Siri around Gemini. Musk argues the move hands Google an “unreasonable” concentration of power, while Apple appears to be using Gemini as a shortcut to speed up its slower AI rollout.
Over the past months, we have repeatedly heard that Apple’s AI progress has been moving at a turtle-like pace, while the rest of the tech world is sprinting ahead. But the “tortoise” may have just pulled out a strong trump card: leveraging Google’s Gemini capabilities to reinforce Apple’s own network effect through Siri, even as Elon Musk and his circle fume about the decision. Apple has now officially selected Google Gemini to power the next generation of on-device Foundation models.
This partnership would allow Apple to ship a revamped Siri, most likely with the upcoming iOS 26.4 update. That update is expected to bring long-awaited in-app actions, personal context awareness, and on-screen awareness to Apple’s voice assistant. Crucially, Apple is reportedly deploying a massive 1.2-trillion-parameter custom Gemini AI model on its cloud servers to power Apple Intelligence features inside a privacy-focused environment – where simpler AI tasks are handled on-device using local models and the device’s computing resources, while more complex requests are routed to Apple’s private cloud using encrypted, stateless data for deeper inference.
This seems like an unreasonable concentration of power for Google, given that the also have Android and Chrome
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 12, 2026
Musk is clearly not thrilled about the deal, calling it an unreasonable concentration of power for Google. Of course, he is not exactly an objective observer here, as he has already sued Apple and OpenAI, accusing them of working together to suppress competition. Even so, Musk’s complaints about Google feel rather weak, especially considering Google does not appear to gain much from this arrangement beyond the alleged $1 billion per year it would receive for licensing Gemini AI models to the iPhone maker.
Apple, on the other hand, stands to benefit significantly. Imagine asking the upgraded Siri to book a table at a restaurant. Would anyone tell their friends “Google Gemini booked it”? Of course not – because the underlying technology is irrelevant to the user experience, particularly when users only see, interact with, and judge Apple’s Siri, which will simply appear more capable.
This is Apple’s play: massively increasing its network effect and the perceived value of a Siri-centered AI interface, while letting Google Gemini act as a critical buffer until Apple’s own AI capabilities reach a more mature, competitive level.
Source: WCCFTech
