Apple, the tech giant that gave you a keyboard without an escape key and a $1,000 monitor stand, is now whispering sweet nothings into the ears of Perplexity — a buzzy AI startup that might finally bring some non-embarrassing intelligence to the Cupertino ecosystem.
Right now, Siri is the digital equivalent of that one friend who never hears you correctly but still answers with unearned confidence. Apple knows it. You know it. Tim Cook’s grandma knows it. So instead of wasting another fiscal year throwing duct tape on outdated natural language models, Apple might inject some real smarts into their software by cozying up to Perplexity.
What’s Perplexity? Think ChatGPT, but focused and not trying to role-play as your therapist. It’s one of those AI search tools built to give real-time, trustworthy(ish) info — unlike most of the internet. Apple’s interest isn’t confirmed, of course, because secrecy is woven into their DNA tighter than their obsessive cable management. But insiders say they’re sniffing around believing Perplexity could fill the gaping hole Siri left in everyone’s soul.
Why now? Because Microsoft already made Google cry with OpenAI and Copilot. Meanwhile, Apple’s been handing out digital crayons when everyone else is building android Einsteins. Considering Perplexity just grabbed $73 million in VC money from people who throw cash at anything with machine learning in its pitch deck, the company’s clearly not a joke — or at least, not an obvious one.
Bottom line: Apple knows it needs to stop being the weird uncle in the AI arms race. Whether it buys, partners, or just learns from Perplexity’s smarter brainchild, it’s finally admitting that maybe, just maybe, people want their $1,200 pocket computer to understand a damn sentence once in a while.
Will it work? Will Siri stop acting like she’s high? Who knows. But for now, Apple seems poised to stop faking it, and start actually thinking it.