You May Soon Have to Pay More for Expanded Access to Siri’s Artificial Intelligence.
When your compatible iPhone, Mac, iPad, and Apple Watch update to version 27 later this year, you’ll notice a significant improvement to your digital assistant. Siri is now called ” Siri AI ” and, thanks to support from Apple Intelligence, can do much more than the previous version of Siri. While this means your assistant can now answer questions about what’s displayed on your screen and provide answers similar to ChatGPT, I personally hope simple commands become more reliable. (Please stop checking my contacts for the weather forecast, Siri.)
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Siri’s best AI capabilities may come at a cost.
You might be interested in trying Apple’s take on ChatGPT and Gemini, and Apple knows it. During Apple’s earnings call on Thursday, outgoing CEO Tim Cook acknowledged that he believes people will actively use Siri AI and Apple’s new AI features. Artificial intelligence, of course, places enormous demands on system resources. If you use Siri AI on a device, that load falls solely on your iPhone, Mac, or iPad. But Siri AI isn’t entirely native: many of its features require computing power to be transferred to the cloud to function properly. The more customers use Apple’s AI-powered apps and connect to the company’s cloud servers, the more expensive it becomes for Apple to maintain these systems.
Tim Cook has a solution. During his fiscal year-end conference call, Cook stated, “We’ll have upgrade options for iCloud+ that will allow users to buy the entire service.” Cook didn’t go into detail, but it’s clear where this is heading: Apple, like other tech companies, will allow people to pay more for access to higher usage limits and, possibly, priority data speeds.
This isn’t entirely unexpected. When Apple officially announced Siri AI and the latest Apple Intelligence features, the company mentioned that there would be limits on some of the most resource-intensive processes, including, in particular, image generation. Image Playground, Apple’s image generator, is expected to receive a significant update this year, and it appears it won’t be free. This is the first time Apple has acknowledged that Siri AI might be a paid service of any kind. Back then, Apple stated that “expanded access is available on most iCloud+ plans.” This may still be the case, and most iCloud+ users can access Siri AI as part of their plan—or you may have to upgrade your plan to access these maximum usage limits.
While most Apple users likely won’t be willing to pay for expanded access to Siri AI and Apple Intelligence—after all, many of us refuse to pay for iCloud storage—there will undoubtedly be some who will give it a try. This will be another perk Apple can tout to boost its revenue stream, which, as experience shows, is indeed quite lucrative. As The Verge notes , the company generated $30.74 billion in revenue from services alone. If Apple can make more money from users interested in leveraging Siri AI to its full potential, so much the better.
We don’t know how much these usage restrictions will cost.
However, we don’t know what price Apple plans to set for this. Currently, iCloud+ plans range from the following :
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50 GB : $0.99
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200GB : $2.99
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2 TB : $9.99
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6 TB : $29.99
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12 TB : $59.99
Will each plan have its own pricing tier with additional usage limits? Or will Apple simply lock higher usage limits only to its more expensive plans? It’s possible that 200GB subscribers will have to pay up to $4.99 per month for higher usage limits, which would be in line with the base price of Google AI Plus . Until Apple releases more details, we simply can’t say for sure.