Apple’s new Siri AI could eventually push some Apple Intelligence features behind a paid tier, especially as the assistant becomes more conversational and relies more heavily on cloud-based AI tools.
The idea comes as Apple begins testing its upgraded Siri experience, which brings personal context, web answers, onscreen awareness, improved image tools, and a dedicated app for revisiting AI conversations across Apple devices.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said Apple still needs to prove that its AI features are useful enough before asking users to pay, but he believes the company could reach that point within the next year.
“The baseline features in Siri, things that existed prior to Siri AI, plus the on-device personal context features, will always be free with no rate limits. The more conversational, world knowledge and generative AI features will eventually get rate limited and then require a fee, just like with ChatGPT,” Gurman said.
This approach would let Apple keep core Siri features available to all users while charging for heavier AI tasks that cost more to run, such as long conversations, world knowledge answers, Image Playground, and other generative tools.
Apple already allows iCloud+ users to raise some Apple Intelligence limits, which points toward a future where more advanced Siri AI access becomes part of a separate subscription. For now, Apple is focused on testing the new Siri AI before its wider beta release later this year.
