Siri's AI glow-up might come with a velvet rope
In his last earnings call as Apple CEO before handing the reins to John Ternus, Tim Cook admitted the revamped Siri AI, finally rolling out in iOS 27 this fall, could get a paywall for heavy users, letting them buy extra compute through existing iCloud+ plans. It is a very OpenAI-and-Anthropic move for a company that spent two years playing catch up on AI, even licensing Google's Gemini to prop Siri up, and paying $250 million to settle a lawsuit over oversold AI promises. Add in an industry-wide RAM shortage jacking up hardware costs, and Apple's 'it just works' AI dream now comes with fine print.
Apple spent years mocking subscription fatigue, now it wants a cut of yours too.