As Apple tries to shrink Gemini for the iPhone, a cloud component is probably inevitable.
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Apple reportedly trying to distill Google’s multi-trillion-parameter Gemini AI to run on iPhone
- Thread starter JournalBot
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Who is asking for this? Who wants this? I don't even know anyone to use Siri for anything more than changing a music track.
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Given the mounting antipathy to AI, Apple might be better off keeping their heads down until the dust settles.
Personally, I have no intention of sending more data to any American data centers until I can trust Apple engineers won't receive a letter ordering them to hand over data on anybody who doesn't like Trump or the GOP. American tech companies have already been ordered to do this to Dutch civil servants and cut off services to ICC judges.
If Apple wants to retain trust of over a billion users around the globe, they may have to figure out a way to build cloud services beyond the reach of the US government.
Personally, I have no intention of sending more data to any American data centers until I can trust Apple engineers won't receive a letter ordering them to hand over data on anybody who doesn't like Trump or the GOP. American tech companies have already been ordered to do this to Dutch civil servants and cut off services to ICC judges.
If Apple wants to retain trust of over a billion users around the globe, they may have to figure out a way to build cloud services beyond the reach of the US government.
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With a chat bot, the output space is vast - you can literally ask it anything. With in device AI intended to drive the app intents system, the decision space is much more bounded. So while I don’t disagree at all with the assessment that on device will be strictly worse than in the cloud generally, I think in some domains on device will end up being much more capable than people expect.
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As long as I can opt all the way out, it's not my business what Apple wants to waste its money on.
On that conditional, I have more faith in Apple than most other vendors, but that's like saying three cents is worth more than two.
On that conditional, I have more faith in Apple than most other vendors, but that's like saying three cents is worth more than two.
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I use it for two other wild things: setting reminders and setting timers. I need more AI so I can set more reminders, I assume? /s
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OK, as long as I can turn it off. Completely off. Totally, completely, entirely off. OFF.
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Leaving aside the general yuckiness, as a systems problem this is a lot like datacenters in space. It solves one problem while creating a host of others. Just doesn't seem like a good plan. And that is why Android just sends the string over the wire and gets a string back.
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MilanKraft
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
I never thought my older iPhone Pro and its non-AI-capable CPU would be a feature, but sure enough... reading this article and others like it, I find more reason than ever to not upgrade. And when the time comes...
"I don't always upgrade my iPhone...
...but when I do, I make sure it doesn't support AI."
"I don't always upgrade my iPhone...
...but when I do, I make sure it doesn't support AI."
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I haven't updated to 26 in order to avoid Liquid Glass, so I guess I'm just going to run my current phone (purchased Nov '24) into the ground and maybe when it finally dies, this madness will have passed.
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The thing I don't get is the rush to make 16GB RAM the baseline due to on-device AI models, when the models will already take up much of that space. It's assuming over half your RAM is going to be used for a single AI model, because even trying to context switch that with flash will be too slow. It leaves a few meagre scraps of RAM for the actual apps you wanted to run.
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I just want Siri to do the things Apple said it could a decade ago. Even today it’s not bright enough to process a request such as “how many days has it been since January 28th?”. I thought that would be a slam dunk for Siri’s Wolfram Alpha back end integration. Instead Siri had to ask chatGPT.
Until last year, our HomePods would choke on “please turn off the living room and kitchen lights”. I was genuinely excited when that started working. It usually works. Well. Usually.
I don’t care how Apple accomplishes it, I just want Siri to do the things it has long promised and rarely delivered. If buying services from a company that’s f****** competent at its job will get it done, then great!
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The way some of these companies are operating, I think you're supposed to use moar AI to set up timers to remind you to use moar AI.
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They're working with Google, so don't hold your breath.
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This article leaves me wondering what happened to Apple‘s private cloud compute project.
is it dead? does it not work for this kind of application?
It sounded promising and looked as though there was proof of concept two years ago.
is it dead? does it not work for this kind of application?
It sounded promising and looked as though there was proof of concept two years ago.
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Perhaps not for journos, but I'm going to do my damnedest to do so for as long as possible. That includes not "upgrading" devices with something newer. Which, given the impact of ever skyrocketing memory prices, is becoming an easier choice every day.
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Strangely enough, it's pretty easy to get rid of embedded AI in Android. Just go to apps and disable Google, Chrome, Gemini, Gmail.
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Siri on our HomePods before iOS 26 was great. Now she doesn’t understand anything, and this is after multiple hard resets, etc. in short, we have to yell at Siri now — she’s gone deaf — and if you pause, she’ll ignore us.
“SIRITURNONTHELAMP” is how we have to do it now.
Maddening.
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poke 532810
Ars Praetorian
The only thing I use Siri for is calling someone while driving my pickup that doesn’t have Car Play - “Siri, call Foo on speaker”. My brother and mom use Siri to set timers without having to unlock the phone and open the clock app. That requires basic speech processing, which can be done entirely on device. No cloud or LLM needed.
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So their collaboration means they are also working in the other direction and I can finally use Google Assistant/Gemini with Apple Music on my Google Device to play the tracks that exist on my phone natively instead of it defaulting to playing only what's available on the cloud?
When we complain that they are monopolizing and segmenting market we don't mean "Work together to create something that no party wants" we meant "Work together and be customer focused" but that doesn't get as much news coverage or Stock Buy-in as AI so....
When we complain that they are monopolizing and segmenting market we don't mean "Work together to create something that no party wants" we meant "Work together and be customer focused" but that doesn't get as much news coverage or Stock Buy-in as AI so....
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So this is what happens when they have their AI efforts lead by the guy who did the Vision Pro.
So it’ll eat up resources on the phone while not being as good as any of the popular models. Even if it’s running in the cloud, an M series chip doesn’t come close to Nvidia’s best. And from the sound of it, they aren’t using the best from Nvidia either.
So they’ll get the PR hit of being all about AI in 2026, another for being behind everyone else again, and a third for making everyone’s iPhones worse.
So it’ll eat up resources on the phone while not being as good as any of the popular models. Even if it’s running in the cloud, an M series chip doesn’t come close to Nvidia’s best. And from the sound of it, they aren’t using the best from Nvidia either.
So they’ll get the PR hit of being all about AI in 2026, another for being behind everyone else again, and a third for making everyone’s iPhones worse.
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STOP THE MADNESS! NO ONE WANTS THIS CRAP!!!!
Apple, remember your old "think different" ad? It's time for you to think different. Leave the AI garbage to everyone else and stress that your phones and devices aren't infested with it. Customers will love you for it!
Apple, remember your old "think different" ad? It's time for you to think different. Leave the AI garbage to everyone else and stress that your phones and devices aren't infested with it. Customers will love you for it!
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The only people who matter in our society: executives and fund managers, who will never allow their own children to come into contact with this stuff.
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Hey, but like what if they didn't? I want the memory on my phone to be used for the stuff I actually wanted, like pictures and music and podcasts and apps.
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It’s a little depressing that even Ars is taking it as a given that GenAI is an unavoidable fact of technology life now. I work for Big Corporate IT, and have a personal iPhone with Apple Intelligence, and I’ve used GenAI less than a dozen times in my life, mostly to see what it can do. (It’s admittedly impressive technology, but doesn’t do anything that I find useful or valuable.)
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Does it take this much compute power to distinguish between contact names and song/singer names for verbal commands? Because vocal control still too-often gets it wrong no matter how well I enunciate.
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My family members, who still say to Siri things like "How long should I boil a lobster?"
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Can we start on the "completely disable this feature" now so we're ready? Please.
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When I was younger, I used Siri for:
"Start a timer."
If motoring:
"Where am I?"
"What's the temperature?"
"Take me home."
"Read my messages."
"Tell me a joke."
Apple say that a smarter Siri can do more complex tasks, of course.
The largest general purpose LLM (24B) I can run on my 16GB mini is 8.64GB in size and it does a wide variety of tasks, none particularly well. However, an 8.64GB model besides eating a lot of space, severely taxes the system to the point that notifications are not always announced and I occasionally need to kill speechsynthesisd for them to announce again.
I wonder how large Apple's on-device LLM is.
edit:
You originally needed 4GB to install Apple Intelligence but now it's up to 7GB.
edit 2:
Did you know the free OSS apfel allows you to interface the on-device LLM (3B)?
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That just means it will not run the local models and instead you'll get cloud-only AI
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It is very indicative that the Ars audience who are technically savvy and on the leading edge (so perhaps better positioned to see the downsides) do not want this.
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