Apple in talks to pay publishers for Siri AI content

Apple is currently in discussions with news publishers to secure compensation for the use of their content to power its upcoming Siri artificial intelligence system. The negotiations, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, indicate that the technology giant is seeking to integrate current news and information into the assistant’s capabilities ahead of a planned launch later this year.

Under the proposed arrangement, Apple has outlined a variable compensation model that ties payments to actual usage by users, rather than offering fixed licensing fees. This approach represents a departure from the standard industry practice of guaranteed fees, which are typically linked to broad access to content libraries. The new structure would essentially operate on a pay-as-you-go basis, rewarding publishers only when their specific content is utilised by the AI.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has considered a nine-figure budget to fund these payments. While the exact figures have not been independently confirmed by the company, the scale of the proposed spending underscores the importance Apple places on securing high-quality, real-time news data for its AI infrastructure. Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment regarding the status of these talks.

These discussions occur as Apple continues to work on significantly enhancing Siri, years after initially promising users a smarter and more capable AI assistant. The push to integrate live news feeds is part of a broader industry effort by tech giants to improve the relevance and accuracy of their generative AI tools, which are increasingly becoming central to user engagement.

The move comes against a backdrop of evolving tensions between technology platforms and content creators. In a related development earlier this month, Twitch streamers were given the option to opt out of having their content used to train Amazon’s AI models. Meanwhile, the competitive landscape for AI assistants remains intense, with Google’s Gemini app recently reaching one billion monthly active users, a milestone comparable to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

As the September launch window approaches, the outcome of these negotiations will likely influence how other tech firms approach content licensing for their AI products. Whether Apple’s variable model becomes an industry standard or remains an outlier will depend on the final agreements reached with major publishing houses.