Apple is planning to integrate AI-powered search options into its Safari browser, in a development that could impact Google’s stronghold in the online search market.

Apple’s senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue, said the company is “actively looking at” integrating AI search providers such as OpenAI, Perplexity AI and Anthropic into Safari.

Cue made the comments while testifying in a US Department of Justice antitrust case examining Google’s dominance in online search.

“We will add them to the list — they probably won’t be the default,” Cue said, according to Bloomberg.

He added that “prior to AI, my feeling around this was, none of the others were valid choices. I think today there is much greater potential because there are new entrants attacking the problem in a different way.”

According to a source familiar with the matter cited by Reuters, Cue noted that Safari searches declined for the first time last month, attributing the drop to users increasingly turning to AI tools.

Cue also said he believes AI tools will eventually replace traditional search engines.

“There’s enough money now, enough large players, that I don’t see how it doesn’t happen,” he said.

The current agreement between Apple and Google, reportedly worth around $20bn annually, makes Google the default search engine on Safari.

Bloomberg reported that Cue confirmed a “bake-off” took place last year between Google and OpenAI before Apple selected ChatGPT for use in its upcoming AI features.

Cue said the terms Google offered “had a lot of things Apple wouldn’t agree to and didn’t agree to with OpenAI.”

He also revealed that Apple has had discussions with other AI players, including DeepSeek and xAI’s Grok, and that the agreement with OpenAI allows Apple to add more providers to its operating system in the future.

Google, in response to the developments, said it has continued to see growth in overall search queries, including those from Apple devices.

“People are seeing that Google Search is more useful for more of their queries — and they’re accessing it for new things and in new ways,” the company wrote in a blog post, highlighting features such as voice and visual search.

Recently, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company hopes to finalise an agreement with Apple by mid-year to bring its Gemini AI product to iPhones.

The Justice Department has proposed banning Google from paying to be the default search engine as part of potential remedies in its antitrust case.

Cue said he has “lost sleep” over the possibility of ending the revenue-sharing deal with Google.

Bloomberg reported that his division, which includes iCloud, Apple Music, and Apple TV+, generated $26.6bn in revenue during the March 2025 quarter, and would be directly affected by any disruption in the search partnership.