Can the Pixel 9 do what iPhone’s AI cannot?

I’m a longtime iPhone person who can also be all for AI experiences like ChatGPT. Till final week, I used to be high-quality with Apple being behind rivals with its Apple Intelligence options. I used to be additionally okay with ready for Apple to deploy its AI options in Europe.

However it seems that the Apple Intelligence characteristic I used to be most trying ahead to, the smarter Siri, is vaporware. All of a sudden, the hole between Apple and its rivals is extremely giant.

Apple’s AI misstep is definitely the largest fumble in AI tech since ChatGPT turned viral in late 2022. Google Search AI Overviews recommending glue on pizza appears like a minor glitch as compared. I want Siri AI might make such errors.

I didn’t point out Google by accident. Gemini is a giant win for the corporate in mild of the Apple Intelligence mess. Given Google’s large lead, Gemini was all the time the superior product. However Apple delivered a imaginative and prescient at WWDC 2024 that not even Google might match.

All generative AI software program options are attending to a spot the place AI behaves more and more like a private assistant, the place AI brokers do issues in your behalf. That was what Apple mentioned Siri would do in iOS 18. After final week, it’s unclear whether or not we’ll have to attend till iOS 19, iOS 20, or later for that form of superior Siri performance in Apple Intelligence.

That’s why I agree with John Gruber’s take that Google has a large and doubtlessly distinctive probability to humiliate Apple Intelligence at I/O 2025 in Might with out ever mentioning Apple, the iPhone, or Apple Intelligence by title. It ought to completely do it, too.

I’ve instructed you for years how the iPhone was basically Google’s North Star when designing the Pixel. Google would usually criticize Apple’s iPhone solely to then repeat the identical play when it got here to next-gen Pixels.

However Google has slowly discovered its identification, and the Gemini addition definitely makes the Pixel telephones extra compelling than ever. I wrote final August that the Pixel 9 is Google’s greatest weapon towards Apple Intelligence, a Hail Mary towards the AI iPhones that had been coming.

Google pushed up the Pixel 9 launch by two months to beat Apple Intelligence to the market. I defined how the Pixel 9 sequence took benefit of a giant Apple {hardware} miscalculation. Apple Intelligence introduced us the largest fragmentation in iOS historical past, a minimum of on paper. Telephones just like the non-Professional iPhone 15 fashions had been no good for Apple’s AI.

This fragmentation leveled the enjoying area for Google. The Pixel 9 had a giant probability to impress consumers with AI options earlier than Apple Intelligence iPhones arrived.

After final week, it’s clear that Google is the massive winner in terms of built-in AI options on telephones. The iOS fragmentation doesn’t even matter on condition that Apple Intelligence, as it’s now on iPhone, means little to iPhone 15 Professional and iPhone 16 customers. The Pixel 9, in the meantime, has significantly better built-in AI options that Google retains perfecting.

I anticipate I/O 2025 to focus closely on Google’s next-gen AI plans. That’s what occurred final 12 months and the 12 months earlier than that. AI may be very a lot the speak of the city in tech. Gemini is perhaps significantly better than Apple Intelligence, but it surely’s nonetheless not the primary AI that involves thoughts. That position continues to be reserved for ChatGPT, my go-to genAI software program proper now.

Google might very nicely hit Apple’s AI issues in the course of the presentation, and Gruber got here up with the easiest way for Google to do it. The corporate might replicate Apple’s sensible Siri demos from WWDC 2024 however do it with Gemini software program on Pixel 9 telephones. Right here’s Gruber’s full quote:

What I might do if I labored at Google is put together a dwell demo of Google Gemini on a Pixel cellphone doing precisely what Apple confirmed in final 12 months’s announcement at WWDC, after which once more within the Bella Ramsey TV industrial that Apple pulled from YouTube. One thing like this:

Presenter: It is a dwell demo, on my Pixel 9. I would like to select my mother up on the airport and she or he despatched me an electronic mail together with her flight data. [Invokes Gemini on phone in hand…] Gemini, when is my mother’s flight touchdown?

Gemini: Your mother’s flight is on time, and arriving at SFO at 11:30.

Presenter: I don’t all the time keep in mind so as to add issues to my calendar, and so I really like that Gemini can assist me preserve observe of plans that I’ve made in informal dialog, like this lunch reservation my mother talked about in a textual content. [Invokes Gemini…] What’s our lunch plan?

Gemini: You’re having lunch at Waterbar at 12:30.

Presenter: How lengthy will it take us to get there from the airport?

Gemini presents a Google Maps driving instructions popup window exhibiting it should take 21 minutes.

Then do one other dwell demo with the “What’s the title of the man I had a gathering with a few months in the past at Cafe Grenel?” instance from Apple’s now-pulled Apple Intelligence industrial. The very same demos, however actual: dwell and on stage. These could be nice demos even when Apple had by no means promised to ship them. However on condition that Apple did promise them for this 12 months, and has now delayed them till “the approaching 12 months”, they’re devastating if Google can present them truly engaged on Apple’s personal unique timeline.

Can Gemini do all that? The present mannequin can a minimum of partially present conduct much like what Apple imagined for Siri. Gemini can work together together with your display and let you know what’s on it (Circle to Search). The AI can also be built-in into built-in Google apps on Pixel telephones, resembling Gmail, Messages, Calendar, Maps, and Pictures.

Additionally, Google simply introduced extra personalization options coming to Gemini, beginning with the AI’s potential to take a look at your Google Search information. 

I think about that no matter AI novelties Google exhibits at I/O 2025 would take Gemini to the subsequent degree, particularly if Android XR will get ample time on the present. That’s Google’s AI/AR working system for sensible glasses and spatial computer systems. You want Gemini to be extra private and act as a real assistant earlier than you possibly can launch sensible glasses with superior AI performance.

With all that in thoughts, Google can and will destroy Apple Intelligence on stage at I/O. I say that as an Apple fan and somebody who gained’t ditch the iPhone or ChatGPT in favor of Pixel telephones and Gemini AI. Apple has to really feel this loss and cope with all of the fallout.

No matter occurs, I’m sure Google is not going to pretend AI demos at I/O. It did that with the primary Gemini demos, and everyone seen. Whether or not it makes enjoyable of Apple or not, Google will certainly host dwell demos of its Pixel AI options.

Additionally, I’m undecided Google can mock Apple as Gruber suggests with out making it very clear it’s the iPhone and Apple Intelligence they’re laughing at.

Lastly, I’ll additionally say that I nonetheless anticipate sensible Siri to be accessible on iPhone, iPad, and Mac sooner or later, and I’m keen to attend some time longer.