In his final earnings call as CEO of Apple, Tim Cook hinted that the company's long-awaited Siri AI upgrade could come with some paywalled limits. While Cook conceded these plans are not set in stone, he envisions users being able to buy more compute for Siri AI via its existing iCloud+ subscriptions.

‘We do believe there will be people that want to use [Siri AI] a lot, and so we will have some kind of upgrade possibilities on iCloud+, where people can buy up the stack on iCloud+,’ Cook said. ‘But we could not be more excited about where [Siri AI] is.’

Most other AI providers like Anthropic and OpenAI operate similarly, offering a limited free version to consumers with the option of upgrading to support more usage. The new-and-improved Siri AI is available in the iOS 27 beta and planned for broader rollout this fall.

The overhaul was so delayed that Apple had to pay $250 million to settle a class action lawsuit over how it marketed the iPhone 16’s AI capabilities. As longtime Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering John Ternus steps into Tim Cook's shoes, he will take the helm at a critical time for the company.

Apple has fallen behind in its efforts to build an advanced AI assistant, even capitulating to its direct competitor Google by licensing a custom Gemini model to augment Siri. Due to the AI-driven RAM shortage across the industry, it’s more expensive to build hardware, leading companies like Meta, Samsung, Microsoft, and Sony to raise prices of some devices.