Apple announced that Safari will support Perplexity and other AI-powered search engines.
The Safari experience might soon be changed by artificial intelligence. Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of services, revealed that the company is working on adding support for AI-powered search engines, such as Perplexity, to its web browser.
This information was revealed during the CEO's appearance on the stand to testify during the antitrust trial between Google and the US Department of Justice. Kuo predicted that platforms using artificial intelligence will soon replace traditional search engines.
In this regard, Bloomberg reported that Apple's CEO stated that sooner or later, tools developed by companies like OpenAI or Anthropic, among many others, will become part of Safari. He even acknowledged that Apple has already had some conversations with Perplexity AI on the matter, though he did not say whether it was an official contact or simply a show of interest.
However, Eddy Cue emphasized that he doesn't believe any of these AI-powered alternatives could dethrone Google as Safari's default search engine. He explained, "We'll add them to the list, but they're unlikely to be the default."
During his testimony, Cue said he was convinced that Google should remain the default search engine for Safari. He stated that the economic terms of the agreement with Google were the best.
As has become known in recent years, Google pays Apple exorbitant annual sums to be the default search engine for Safari. This figure represents 36% of the revenue generated by Apple's browser and could have exceeded $20 billion in 2022 alone.
However, the craze for generative AI and the search engines built into tools like ChatGPT and Cloud is changing the landscape significantly. According to Eddy Cue, web searches on Safari recorded a decline for the first time in April, which could be directly linked to the increased use of AI-powered search engines.