Apple may charge heavy Siri AI users via iCloud upgrades

Apple CEO Tim Cook has indicated that users who heavily rely on the company's forthcoming Siri AI upgrade may need to pay for additional capacity through their iCloud subscriptions. The remarks came during Apple's fiscal third-quarter 2026 earnings call, held on August 3, 2026, and signal a potential shift toward a usage-based model for the advanced assistant.

Cook stated that while plans are not finalized, the company anticipates offering upgrade options within iCloud for customers who demand substantial AI compute resources. "We do believe there will be people that want to use it a lot," Cook said, "and so we will have some kind of upgrade possibilities on iCloud, where people can buy up the stack on iCloud." He added that it is still early to determine the long-term compute costs or customer response, and Apple has not announced specific pricing, usage caps, or a rollout date.

The new Siri AI, which promises deeper conversational abilities, personal context awareness, and the ability to act across applications, was unveiled in June 2026 and is currently available in a public beta of iOS 27. A full public rollout is expected this fall alongside the official release of iOS 27....