Before Tim Cook Bows Out, Apple Hands Siri Over to Google's AI

Tim Cook stood on the stage at Apple Park. It was the last time he would stand there as CEO. Back in April he announced he would step down in September, which turned WWDC into his farewell. For his final answer to Apple, he put it into the product itself: a brand-new Siri, running on Google's Gemini model underneath, with Apple paying roughly a billion dollars a year in licensing fees. This is a little out of character. What Apple has always been proudest of is doing everything itself: its own chips, its own systems, and a tagline that says "we don't use your data." Having Siri run on Google's computing power comes from a very plain judgment call: to build an AI assistant that's actually good enough, Apple can't do it on its own right now. At the same time, the "we don't use your data" promise isn't being thrown out entirely. The personal stuff, your calendar and messages and the like, is still handled on Apple's own servers. Only the parts that need complex reasoning get handed to Google. That billion-dollar bill is really saying something very everyday: if you want good, it costs money. If you want fast, same thing. AI has made things faster, that part is true. But the fact that "a little faster comes with extra cost" has never changed. In the old days, pushing for speed meant adding people and paying overtime. Now it means adding computing power and paying model fees. The reason got swapped out, but the logic is the same. iOS 27 also opened up something very practical for users: you can set Claude or ChatGPT as your iPhone's default AI assistant. That slot used to belong to Siri alone. Now it's a choice. This change could happen because Apple decided that letting users pick fits what users actually want better than insisting they can only use Apple's own. After the fall update, the iPhone in your hand will let you choose: which AI assistant do you want? Siri runs on Google's model, and Claude or ChatGPT work too. Which one suits you only counts once you've actually tried it.