Apple has shared new details about the technology behind its latest Apple Intelligence platform, explaining how its new Apple Foundation Models (AFM) work and clarifying the company’s relationship with Google. During a post-WWDC technical discussion, Apple executives said the company does not use Google’s Gemini models, Google Search, or Google Assistant infrastructure to power Siri or Apple Intelligence.
Apple Says Google Assistant Plays No Role
Craig Federighi, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, directly addressed (via 9to5mac) speculation about Google’s involvement.
“Of course, we don’t have the Gemini app as our app. In fact, none of that client code is part of how we run on iOS. For these models, we use none of the models that Google deploy to their customers, nor do we use the infrastructure and means by which they deploy models to their customers. And then, when it comes to the knowledge base, we of course don’t use Google Search or anything like that as the foundation of our system. So I hope that’s clear. The amount of the Google Assistant we use is none.”
Craig Federighi said this while explaining Apple’s privacy-focused architecture for Apple Intelligence.
Inside Apple’s New AFM Model Family
Apple’s third-generation AFM lineup includes two on-device models and three cloud-based models. The company introduced AFM Core, AFM Core Advanced, AFM Cloud, AFM Cloud Image, and the more powerful AFM Cloud Pro.
According to Apple AI VP Amar Subramanya, AFM Core Advanced uses a sparse multimodal architecture that enables features such as expressive voices and invitation capabilities directly on the device. Meanwhile, AFM Cloud Image powers image generation and editing tools, including spatial reframing.
Apple said these models are custom-built for Apple Silicon, trained using proprietary data, and refined using outputs from Gemini frontier models. The company described this process as model refinement rather than direct use of Gemini itself.
Apple also highlighted its System Orchestrator, which decides whether requests run on-device or through Private Cloud Compute. The system can access app actions, personal content through Spotlight’s semantic index, and on-screen context while maintaining Apple’s privacy standards.
For more demanding tasks such as complex reasoning and agentic actions, AFM Cloud Pro runs on Nvidia GPUs hosted in Google’s cloud. Apple says it configured the infrastructure so user data remains inaccessible, while third-party researchers can independently verify the privacy protections.
