Apple in Talks to Build Google’s Gemini Search Engine into iPhone; xAI Open Sources Grok; LinkedIn Plans to Introduce Gaming

by Aimee Newell Tarín on 19th Mar 2024 in News

On today’s ExchangeWire digest: Apple in Talks to Build Google’s Gemini Search Engine into iPhone; xAI Open Sources Grok; LinkedIn Plans to Introduce Gaming

Apple is reportedly in active negotiations to license Google’s Gemini AI models and build the AI search engine into the iPhone. Google’s AI would be harnessed to power new features coming to the iPhone software this year, report individuals familiar with the situation. If closed, the deal would build greatly on the search partnership between both tech giants – currently, Google pays Apple billions of dollars annually to make its search engine the default option in the Safari web browser. The branding and the terms of the arrangement are yet to be agreed on.

Following Elon Musk’s announcement last week that xAI would open source its AI chatbot Grok, it is now available on GitHub. This will allow researchers and developers to build on the model, as well as impacting how xAI updates the model in the future as it rivals models by competitors in the AI arena. It has been released under the Apache 2.0 license, meaning commercial use is enabled, but the data used to train it is not included (it won’t be connected to X for real-time data either).

In the social sphere, LinkedIn plans to introduce gaming. The social giant will be bringing puzzle-based games to the platform, with three early efforts being Queens, Inference, and Crossclimb. A launch date is yet to be confirmed.