Why Apple rejected Anthropic? Report reveals why Apple picked Gemini over Claude for powering Siri

Apple opted for Google Gemini to power Siri, moving away from plans to use Claude due to high demands from Anthropic. The company continues to leverage OpenAI technology and develop its AI systems internally, while also collaborating with Google for Siri’s functionality.

Earlier this month, Apple finally announced that it won’t be using its internal tech for powering the latest version of Siri and would instead rely on the technical prowess of Google Gemini to power the voice assistant. However, a new report has now claimed that Gemini powering Siri wasn’t always a done deal and that Apple was initially “going to rebuild Siri around Claude.”

Why did Apple use Gemini instead of Claude?

In a recent episode of the TBPN podcast, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman shared that while Apple is using Google Gemini to power Siri and other Apple Intelligence features, the company hasn’t stopped working with other competitors.

Gurman noted that Apple is still using a lot of OpenAI technology in its products. He added that several features in Apple Creator Studio are powered by ChatGPT’s image generation model.

He also made a surprise revelation that a lot of internal work at Apple is being run on Anthropic’s AI models.

“Apple runs on Anthropic at this point. Anthropic is powering a lot of the stuff Apple’s doing internally in terms of product development, a lot of their internal tools,” he said on the podcast.

Gurman also said that Apple has custom versions of Claude running on its own servers internally.

He further noted that Apple was not going to use Google for powering Siri and “was going to rebuild Siri around Claude.” However, that was during the Google antitrust trial in the US, where the Google-Apple partnership was under scrutiny.

Gurman said Anthropic was “holding them over a barrel” and wanted several billion dollars a year to power Siri, with costs set to double annually over the next three years.

After the trial ended and Google and Apple came out with their search deal intact, the two companies were able to partner on Siri without any legal hurdles

Meanwhile, Apple CEO Tim Cook recently confirmed that the Gemini-powered Siri will run either on-device or be powered by Apple’s own Private Cloud Compute system to protect user privacy. Cook also noted that the company would continue its in-house AI development alongside its collaboration with Google on Siri.

“We basically determined that Google’s AI technology would provide the most capable foundation for AFM (Apple Foundation Models), and we believe that we can unlock a lot of experiences and innovate in a key way due to the collaboration,” Cook said during the company’s earnings call.