Apple plans to add AI Search in Safari browser; Senior VP Eddy Cue points to 3 Google rivals

Apple is planning to add AI-powered search options in the Safari browser. According to a Bloomberg report, Apple’s senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue said during his testimony with the US Justice Department that the company is “actively looking at” reshaping Safari. During the testimony, he revealed that searches on Safari dipped for the first time last month.“That has never happened in 22 years,” he said, adding this is due to people using AI. Cue said he believes that AI tools like OpenAI, Perplexity AI and Anthropic’s Claude AI, will eventually replace search engines like Google Chrome, further adding that Apple will bring these options to Safari in the future.“We will add them to the list — they probably won’t be the default,” he said.Currently, Google is the default search engine on Apple’s Safari browser for which the company pays around $20 billion a year to keep. Analysts estimate this accounts for about 36% of the search advertising revenue Google earns through Safari.Cue said that Apple is in discussions with AI search providers like OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic to add their AI tools as an option to Safari.“Prior to AI, my feeling around this was, none of the others were valid choices,” he said. “I think today there is much greater potential because there are new entrants attacking the problem in a different way.”Apple currently integrates OpenAI’s ChatGPT into its Siri digital assistant and plans to add Google’s AI tool Gemini later this year. Cue said the company also considered other AI options, including Anthropic, Perplexity, China-based DeepSeek, and Grok from Elon Musk’s xAI. He added that the deal with OpenAI gives Apple the flexibility to bring in other AI providers to its operating system, including Apple’s own AI models.Google-parent company Alphabet’s shares dipped about 8% on Wednesday (May 7), wiping out $160 billion from the company’s market capitalisation following Eddy Cue’s testimony.