According to informed sources, Apple is in talks with multiple publishers for new content partnerships, aiming to enhance the capabilities of its AI-powered Siri by leveraging news and information. The updated version of Siri is expected to be released later this year. In recent months, Apple has approached several publishing institutions to sign multi-year agreements to obtain content licenses that will support Siri AI in providing the latest news and information.
Differing from the licensing approaches typically used by large AI companies, Apple's proposal may involve a flexible payment mechanism—only paying publishers when their content is actually used by Siri. Sources said Apple has discussed potential payment arrangements that could reach hundreds of millions of dollars. Traditionally, AI companies' licensing deals with news organizations often include guaranteed fees and cover broad content access. Apple's proposed usage-based payment model is quite unconventional, and Apple has not commented on it.
A Key Step in Siri's Reinvention: Addressing Weaknesses and Avoiding Risks
The current negotiations come as Apple accelerates its efforts to reinvent Siri. As the voice assistant covering the Apple ecosystem, Siri has long been criticized for its lack of practicality. Apple previously announced a major upgrade to it, integrating AI capabilities more deeply to make it more suitable for daily use scenarios. Introducing real-time news is clearly aimed at enabling Siri to compete with rival conversational AI in information query scenarios, addressing its "lack of real-time information" weakness.
Apple has had prior preparations. Since launching its paid subscription service Apple News+ in 2019, Apple has continuously collaborated with publishers and has already obtained content access rights, including AI training rights, through certain agreements. News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, still provides news content for Apple services. However, Apple has also learned lessons in AI news features: the AI-generated news summaries launched at the end of 2024 sparked controversy due to incorrect headlines and were quickly discontinued. This time, obtaining content from publishers through a paid model is not only to provide real-time information for Siri's AI capabilities but also reflects Apple's dual considerations of reducing content accuracy and copyright risk while advancing AI news initiatives.
