Did Apple make the right choice in partnering with Google for Siri’s AI features?

The last time we did comparative tests of AI models from OpenAI and Google at Ars was in late 2023, when Google’s offering was still called Bard. In the roughly two years since, a lot has happened in the world of artificial intelligence. And now that Apple has made the consequential decision to partner with Google Gemini to power the next generation of its Siri voice assistant, we thought it was high time to do some new tests to see where the models from these AI giants stand today.

For this test, we’re comparing the default models that both OpenAI and Google present to users who don’t pay for a regular subscription—ChatGPT 5.2 for OpenAI and Gemini 3.2 Fast for Google. While other models might be more powerful, we felt this test best recreates the AI experience as it would work for the vast majority of Siri users, who don’t pay to subscribe to either company’s services.

As in the past, we’ll feed the same prompts to both models and evaluate the results using a combination of objective evaluation and subjective feel. Rather than re-using the relatively simple prompts we ran back in 2023, though, we’ll be running these models on an updated set of more complex prompts that we first used when pitting GPT-5 against GPT-4o last summer.

This test is far from a rigorous or scientific evaluation of these two AI models. Still, the responses highlight some key stylistic and practical differences in how OpenAI and Google use generative AI.

Dad jokesDad jokes

A mathematical word problemA mathematical word problem

Creative writingCreative writing

Public figuresPublic figures

Difficult emailsDifficult emails

Medical adviceMedical advice

Video game guidanceVideo game guidance

Land a planeLand a plane

Final verdictFinal verdict

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