Siri AI could come with a paywall for power users
Apple CEO Tim Cook indicated that future AI-powered Siri features might be gated behind a paid iCloud+ subscription. This move aligns Apple with other AI providers who offer tiered access to advanced compute capabilities.
Why it matters
The potential paywall reflects a broader industry shift toward monetizing generative AI through subscription models to offset high infrastructure costs.
In his final earnings call as CEO of Apple, Tim Cook said that the company’s long-awaited Siri AI upgrade could come with some paywalled limits. While Cook conceded that these plans are not set in stone, he envisions users being able to buy more compute for Siri AI via its existing iCloud+ subscriptions, which offer extended cloud storage.
“We do believe there will be people that want to use [Siri AI] a lot, and so we will have some kind of upgrade possibilities on iCloud+, where people can buy up the stack on iCloud+, and we’ll see how the pickup for that is,” Cook said on Thursday. “But we could not be more excited about where [Siri AI] is.”
Most other AI providers like Anthropic and OpenAI operate similarly, offering a limited free version to consumers with the option of upgrading to support more usage.
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