Craig Federighi says Apple hopes to add Google Gemini and other AI models to iOS 18

As part of today’s WWDC announcements, Apple revealed a partnership with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT natively to iOS 18. During a follow-up interview on Monday, Apple executives Craig Federighi and John Gianandrea explained Apple’s AI goals — and hinted at a potential deal with Google . Gemini in the future.

The interview, moderated by iJustine, took place at the Steve Jobs Theater this afternoon, and included a discussion with John Giannandrea, Apple’s senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy, and Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering.

During the interview, Federighi specifically pointed to Apple’s hopes of eventually allowing users to choose between different models to use with Apple Intelligence. While OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the only option at the moment, Federighi suggested that Google Gemini could come as an option in the future:

We think that eventually people will have a preference for certain templates that they want to use, perhaps a great template for creative writing or a template they like for programming. So we want to finally enable users to submit a template of their choice.

So we may look to do integrations with different models like Google Gemini in the future. I mean there’s nothing to announce right now, but that’s our direction.

The decision to focus on ChatGPT initially was because Apple wanted to “start with the best,” according to Federighi.

Apple will start rolling out Apple Intelligence features later this year. Features will be available for free on iPhone 15 Pro and later and all M-series Macs and iPads.