Apple and Google Advance Their AI Platforms

Apple announced it has expanded the capabilities of its vaunted AI platform for iPhones and other devices. Simultaneously, Google unveiled the latest version of the Gemini large language model (LLM) it claims will move it closer to the creation of a universal assistant.

As part of an operating system update for smartphones, iPads, and Macs, the iPhone maker introduced localized English language support for Apple Intelligence in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand along with various other upgrades to the AI system. In the next 12 months, it expects Apple Intelligence language support to cover Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Vietnamese. This is alongside launching India and Singapore-specific versions of English.

Hailing additional AI applications introduced in iOS 18.2, it pointed to improved emojis, image enhancement tools, and integration of ChatGPT into writing systems and its Siri voice assistant. As Apple unveiled new capabilities being brought to users in iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia, rival Google released the first application from its Gemini 2.0 LLM.

Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash, currently released as an experimental version for developers, is a low-latency model capable of offering multimodal inputs and outputs, among other upgrades to the previous generation. A chat-optimised version is available to exist non-developer Gemini users, with plans to eventually spread access to its latest AI capabilities to more of its products.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the launch is the first in its next era of models, which would be its most capable yet. “Over the last year, we have been investing in developing more agentic models, meaning they can understand more about the world around you, think multiple steps ahead, and take action on your behalf, with your supervision,” Pichai said, adding that with new advances in multimodality, Gemini 2.0 would enable Google to build new AI agents that bring them closer to their vision of a universal assistant.