Sabrina Ortiz/ZDNET
ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Apple plans to launch an AI search engine, reportedly.
- The AI search experience would power the Siri voice assistant.
- The expected launch is in the spring as part of the Siri overhaul.
Though Apple offers useful AI features through its Apple Intelligence suite, discussion of the company’s AI efforts usually returns to one main sticking point: the delay of a revamped Siri.
That launch has been highly anticipated, as it is supposed to push Siri’s capabilities to a new level. The finished product is meant to take all of the personal context from your phone activities to function as a personal assistant — a deeper integration than anything we have seen from other competitors.
Also: Could Apple create an AI search engine to rival Gemini and ChatGPT? Here’s how it could succeed
At WWDC, the company said that the update was still coming, and a new Bloomberg report citing insiders reports significant strides to power that experience, including building an AI search engine.
A search engine, made by Apple
Building on a previous Bloomberg report, which found that Apple’s recently assembled Answers, Knowledge, and Information (AKI) team was working on an “answer engine” that can provide responses to general knowledge questions, using the web, this report goes deeper into the new system referred to internally as World Knowledge Answers.
Also: This handy Apple Intelligence feature saves me over $200 a year
The service would be slated to release in the springtime with the launch of iOS 26.4, alongside the Siri overhaul, according to the report. This system would allow users to find information from the web right in Siri and Apple’s operating system, with the added help of AI.
You can find a roundup of other features the AI system would have, according to the report below:
- An interface that uses the consumer’s everyday data, including text, photos, video, and local points of interest.
- An AI-powered summarization system to make results more digestible and more accurate
- Siri would be able to navigate users’ devices with voice-only controls
- As Bloomberg previously reported, a chatbot-like experience for search is still being worked on.
While rumors of an AI search engine from Apple are not new, the report does highlight that underpining the new system could be a Google-developed AI model. According to the report’s sources, Google and Apple reached a formal agreement this week for Apple to test the model to power the voice assistant.
Bigger picture
Using Google’s models might be a smart move for Apple, as the company has developed capable models and has experience dominating the search engine space for decades. According to StatCounter, as of August 2025, Google held 89.83% of the search engine market share worldwide, followed by Bing, which held only 3.95%.
Google also knows how to incorporate AI into its search experience, with AI overviews and AI Mode, two different experiences that leverage AI to get information to users quicker and more easily. The AI search engine space has other players, such as Perplexity, which was built to be an AI-first search engine, and ChatGPT, which folded in what it originally called ChatGPT Search into its chatbot experience.
Also: Can GPT-5 fix Apple Intelligence? We’re about to find out
All eyes will be on Apple next week as the company prepares to launch its iPhone 17 lineup, other products, and, most importantly for AI-afficionados, iOS 26. The operating system was launched at WWDC in June and includes an extensive suite of features that will add to the current Apple Intelligence experience, which users will be able to get simply by updating their devices.
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