AIBRIEF
Tim Cook, on his final earnings call as Apple CEO, said heavy users of the long delayed Siri AI will need a paid iCloud+ cloud subscription upgrade — a tiered paywall like the ones from ChatGPT maker OpenAI and AI lab Anthropic — but he called the
On his final earnings call as Apple CEO, Tim Cook told investors the company will let power users of its long-delayed Siri AI "buy up the stack" through an iCloud+ upgrade tier. Cook stressed the plans are not "set in stone" and that Apple will gauge uptake.
iCloud+ is Apple's existing paid cloud-storage subscription. The proposed mechanic mirrors how OpenAI and Anthropic already charge for heavier AI use, a tiered model Apple has been reluctant to enter.
Siri AI, the overhaul in the iOS 27 beta, ships broadly this fall. The paywall hint landed the same week Apple paid $250 million to settle a class action over how it marketed the iPhone 16's AI capabilities after the Siri overhaul was delayed. Apple has also confirmed it licensed a custom Gemini model from Google to augment its own assistant. Memory-driven hardware costs are rising too; Apple raised Mac and iPad prices last month but has not yet raised iPhone prices.
Cook hands the pricing question to his successor, Ternus.