You Might Soon Have to Pay More for Higher Access to Siri AI

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When your compatible iPhone, Mac, iPad, and Apple Watch update to the "27" era later this year, you'll notice a huge upgrade to your digital assistant. Siri is now "Siri AI," and, through the assistance of Apple Intelligence, can now do a lot more than the previous Siri could. While that means your assistant can now answer questions regarding what's on your screen and provide responses similar to ChatGPT, I'm personally hoping the simple commands are more reliable. (Please stop checking my contacts for the weather, Siri.)

The results from the second round of Lifehacker's Big Guessing Game are in! See what Lifehacker readers think Apple will announce later this year, and tune in for round three starting Aug. 18 for your chance to win the latest Apple Watch.

The best of Siri AI may cost you

You might be excited to try out Apple's take on ChatGPT and Gemini, and Apple knows it. During Apple's earnings call on Thursday, outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook acknowledged that he thinks people will want to take advantage of Siri AI and Apple's new AI features "a lot." AI, of course, puts a huge demand on system resources. If your Siri AI use is on-device, that burden is placed solely on your iPhone, Mac, or iPad. But Siri AI isn't entirely on-device: Plenty of its features need to outsource processing power to the cloud in order to function. The more customers use Apple's AI programs and tap into the company's cloud servers, the more expensive it is for Apple to maintain those systems.

Tim Cook has a solution here. In the earnings calls, Cook said, "we will have some kind of upgrade possibilities on iCloud+ where people can buy up the stack." Cook didn't elaborate, but it's clear where this is headed: Apple, like other tech companies, will let you pay more to access higher usage limits and, potentially, prioritized processing speeds.

This isn't entirely a surprise. When Apple officially announced Siri AI and its newest Apple Intelligence features, the company did mention that there would be usage limits on some of its most demanding processes—including, notably, image generation. Image Playground, Apple's AI image generator, is supposed to get a big upgrade this year, and that apparently won't come free of charge. This is the first time Apple has acknowledged that Siri AI may be paywalled in some way, shape, or form. At the time, Apple said "increased access is available with most iCloud+ subscription plans." That could still be the case, and most iCloud+ users could access Siri AI as part of their plan—or you may have to upgrade your plan further to access those best usage limits.

While most Apple users likely won't want to pay for more Siri AI and Apple Intelligence access—plenty of us refuse to pay for iCloud storage, after all—there will undoubtedly be users who will try it out. It would be just one more perk Apple can advertise to add to its revenue stream, which is proving to be quite lucrative indeed. As The Verge highlights, the company posted $30.74 billion in revenue from services alone. If Apple can make more money from users interested in pushing Siri AI to its limits, all the better.

We don't know how much these usage limits will cost

That said, we don't know what Apple plans to charge here. At this time, iCloud+ plans range from the following:

50GB: $0.99

200GB: $2.99

2TB: $9.99

6TB: $29.99

12TB: $59.99

Will each plan come with its own pricing tier for added usage limits? Will Apple simply lock higher usage limits to its more premium plans? Maybe 200GB subscribers will need to bump up to $4.99 per month for higher usage limits, which would match Google's basic AI Plus price. Until Apple releases more details, we just don't know for sure.