Apple now uses Google servers to power some of its new and upcoming AI features, and the company is using a popup to notify and request user permission in both iOS 27 and iOS 26. Here are the details.
New permission prompt added in iOS 27 and iOS 26 for data that’s sent to Google Cloud
When Apple Intelligence first launched in 2024, one of its primary innovations had little to do with the features themselves, but rather the backend powering those features.
Private Cloud Compute was widely praised by security experts for offering a new standard of security in cloud-based AI technologies. At the time, a key feature of Private Cloud Compute was that it ran entirely on Apple’s own servers.
But in iOS 27 that’s changing—and in fact, the change has already rolled out for some iOS 26 apps.
As discovered in the iOS 27 beta, and in last week’s new Apple Creator Studio updates that feature advanced AI features, Apple is using a popup to notify users about their data being sent to Google Cloud.
You’ll see the following permission prompt when using the shape generation features in iWork on iOS 26. It’s also used for similar AI features in Freeform on iOS 27.
When Apple Creator Studio updates arrived last week, the new AI features seemed on par with what iOS 27 will bring this fall. And the existence of this prompt not only in iOS 27, but also iOS 26, strongly hints that similarly technology is being used.
What does this mean for Private Cloud Compute?
Apple explains how its new AI models, made in collaboration with Google, extend support for Private Cloud Compute to Google Cloud. The company touts similarly strong security protections as before:
PCC on Google Cloud leverages many of the same architectural security patterns as PCC on Apple silicon to implement these layered protections: initial network data parsing for each request happens in a dedicated process within its own namespace, shared inference software is recycled with a short time-to-live duration, and attested keys are held in a separate, dedicated confidential VM isolated from external inputs.