Apple plans to use a 1.2 trillion parameter artificial intelligence model developed by Google to help power an overhaul of the Siri voice assistant, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday.

After an extensive evaluation, the companies are finalising a deal that would have Apple pay about $1 billion a year for access to Google’s technology, the report said.

The iPhone maker will use Google’s Gemini model as a stopgap until its own systems are ready, Bloomberg said. The model’s 1.2 trillion parameters, a measure of AI model complexity, would dwarf Apple’s current systems.

Apple and Alphabet did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Google Maps is heading in a new direction with artificial intelligence sitting in the passenger’s seat.

Fueled by Google’s Gemini AI technology, the world’s most popular navigation app will become a more conversational companion as part of a redesign announced Wednesday.

The hands-free experience is meant to turn Google Maps into something more like an insightful passenger able to direct a driver to a destination while also providing nearby recommendations on places to eat, shop or sightsee, when asked for the advice.

“No fumbling required — now you can just ask,” Google promised in a blog post about the app makeover.

The AI features are also supposed to enable Google Maps to be more precise by calling out landmarks to denote the place to make a turn instead of relying on distance notifications.

AI chatbots, like Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, have sometimes lapsed into periods of making things up — known as “hallucinations” in tech speak — but Google is promising that built-in safeguards will prevent Maps from accidentally sending drivers down the wrong road.

All the information that Gemini is drawing upon will be culled from the roughly 250 million places stored in Google Maps’ database of reviews accumulated during the past 20 years.

Google Maps’ new AI capabilities will be rolling out to both Apple’s iPhone and Android mobile devices.

That will give Google’s Gemini a massive audience to impress — or disappoint — with its AI prowess, given the navigation app is used by more than 2 billion people around the world. Besides making it even more indispensable, Google is hoping the AI features will turn into a showcase that help gives Gemini a competitive edge against ChatGPT.

Prodded by OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT in late 2022, Google has been steadily rolling out more of its own technology designed to ensure its products continue to evolve with the upheaval being unleashed by AI.

The changes have included an overhaul of Google’s ubiquitous search engine that has de-emphasised a listing of relevant web links in its results and increasingly highlighted AI overviews and conversational responses provided through an AI mode.

OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar said an initial public offering is “not on the cards” for the near term, speaking at The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live conference on Wednesday.

Friar said the AI startup is prioritizing growth and research over profitability and that its recent structural changes do not signal an imminent listing.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Last week, Reuters reported that OpenAI was laying the groundwork for an initial public offering that could value the company at up to $1 trillion.

Google is in early discussions to deepen its investment in Anthropic, the Business Insider reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The new round of funding could value Anthropic at more than $350 billion, the report said.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

Video game maker Epic Games has reached a “comprehensive settlement” with Google that could end its 5-year-old legal crusade targeting Google’s Play Store for Android apps.

Epic and Google revealed the settlement agreement in a joint legal document they filed in a San Francisco federal court Tuesday.

They said it “would allow the parties to put their disputes aside while making Android a more vibrant and competitive platform for users and developers.”

Epic, which makes the hit online game Fortnite, won a victory over the summer when a federal appeals court upheld a jury verdict condemning Google’s Android app store as an illegal monopoly. The unanimous ruling cleared the way for a federal judge to enforce a potentially disruptive shake-up that’s designed to give consumers more choices. Google took another hit in October when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to protect it from the judge’s required app store makeover.

The specific terms of the settlement agreement remain under seal and must be approved by U.S. District Judge James Donato, but the two companies broadly outlined some of their agreements in their joint filing.

They said the settlement closely follows Donato’s October 2024 ruling ordering Google to tear down the digital walls shielding its Android app store from competition. That included a provision that will require its app store to distribute rival third-party app stores so consumers can download them to their phones, if they so desire.

Google had hoped to void those changes with an appeal, but the ruling issued in July by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a legal blow for the tech giant, which has been waylaid in three separate antitrust trials affecting different pillars of its internet empire.

Epic Games filed lawsuits targeting Google’s Play Store as well as Apple’s iPhone app store in 2020 in an attempt to bypass exclusive payment processing systems that charged 15% to 30% commissions on in-app transactions. The settlement agreement proposed Tuesday calls for Google to set certain limits on those payments.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney called the settlement an “awesome proposal” in a social media post. Sameer Samat, president of Google’s Android division, said it will “focus on expanding developer choice and flexibility, lowering fees, and encouraging more competition all while keeping users safe.” Google had previously complained that Donato’s forcing of more app store competition posed security concerns. A hearing is set for Thursday.

Amazon sued Perplexity AI on Tuesday over the startup’s “agentic” shopping feature, which uses automation to place orders for users, saying it covertly accessed Amazon customer accounts and disguised automated activity as human browsing.

The clash highlights an emerging debate over regulation of the growing use of AI agents and their interaction with websites, aiming to make them more autonomous and capable of handling everyday online tasks.

Perplexity, which has grown rapidly amid the boom in AI assistants, has previously rejected the U.S. shopping giant’s claims, saying it was using its market dominance to stifle competition.

The startup did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Amazon’s lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the northern district of California.

AMAZON WANTS PERPLEXITY TO END ‘MISCONDUCT’

In the suit, Amazon accused Perplexity of covertly accessing private Amazon customer accounts through its Comet browser and associated AI agent, and of disguising automated activity as human browsing.

Perplexity’s system posed security risks to customer data, Amazon added, and the startup had ignored repeated requests to stop.

“Rather than be transparent, Perplexity has purposely configured its CometAI software to not identify the Comet AI agent’s activities in the Amazon Store,” it said.

“Perplexity’s misconduct must end,” Amazon added. “Perplexity is not allowed to go where it has been expressly told it cannot; that Perplexity’s trespass involves code rather than a lockpick makes it no less unlawful.”

Perplexity earlier said it had received a legal threat from Amazon demanding that it block the Comet AI agent from shopping on the platform, calling the move a broader threat to user choice and the future of AI assistants.

“Bullying is when large corporations use legal threats and intimidation to block innovation and make life worse for people,” the company wrote in a blog post.

In the complaint, Amazon accused Perplexity’s Comet AI agent of degrading customers’ shopping experience and interfering with its ability to ensure customers who use the agent benefit from the tailored shopping experience Amazon curated over decades.

Third-party apps making purchases for users should operate openly and respect businesses’ decisions on whether to participate, Amazon said in an earlier statement.

CREDENTIALS STORED LOCALLY, SAYS PERPLEXITY

Perplexity is among many AI startups seeking to reinvent the web browser around artificial intelligence, aiming to make it more autonomous and capable of handling everyday online activities, from drafting emails to completing purchases.

Amazon is also developing similar tools, such as “Buy For Me”, which lets users shop across brands within its app, and “Rufus”, an AI assistant to recommend items and manage carts.

The AI agent on Perplexity’s Comet browser acts as an assistant that can make purchases and comparisons for users. The company said user credentials remain stored locally and never on its servers.

“Easier shopping means more transactions and happier customers,” it added. “But Amazon doesn’t care, they’re more interested in serving you ads.”

The startup said users had the right to choose their own AI assistants, portraying Amazon’s move as a bid to protect its ad-driven business model.

The Motion Picture Association is asking Meta to stop referring to content shown to teen accounts on Instagram as “guided by PG-13 ratings,” saying it is misleading and could erode trust in its movie ratings system.

A lawyer on behalf of the MPA sent Meta Platforms a cease-and-desist letter asking the tech giant to “immediately and permanently disassociate its Teen Accounts and AI tools from the MPA’s rating system.”

Instagram had announced last month that its teen accounts will be will be restricted to seeing PG-13 content by default. The Motion Picture Association, which runs the film rating system that was established nearly 60 years ago, said at the time that it was not contacted by Meta prior to its announcement.

The MPA says Meta’s claims claims that its Teen Accounts will be “guided by” PG-13 ratings and that its Teen Account content settings are “generally aligned with movie ratings for ages 13+” are “false and highly misleading.” The association’s movie ratings, which range from G to NC-17, are done by parents who watch entire movies and evaluate them to come up with a rating.

“Meta’s attempts to restrict teen content literally cannot be ‘guided by’ or ‘aligned with’ the MPA’s PG-13 movie rating because Meta does not follow this curated process,” the association’s letter says. “Instead, Meta’s content restrictions appear to rely heavily on artificial intelligence or other automated technology measures.”

In a statement, Meta said it updated its teen content policies to be “closer to PG-13 movie standards— which parents already know” so parents can better understand what their teens see on Instagram.

“We know social media isn’t the same as movies, but we made this change to support parents, and we hope to work with the MPA to continue bringing families this clarity,” the company said. Meta added that its intent was never to suggest that it partnered with the MPA or that the material on Instagram had been rated by the movie association.