What seems like a deliberately vague comment by outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook during the earnings call suggests that heavy Siri AI usage could be more expensive than we’ve so far expected.
While it had always seemed clear that we wouldn’t be able to make unlimited use of Siri AI without paying for it in some way, Cook’s remarks do appear to point to some bad news …
What we already knew
Apple aims to do as much AI processing as possible on device, which has the twin benefits of maximizing user privacy while allowing Apple to avoid AI server costs on these tasks. However, there will be tasks that need to be run on Apple’s own Private Cloud Compute servers, and yet others that will require the use of Google Gemini servers.
That server usage of course costs Apple money, so it had always seemed clear that the company would be applying the same freemium strategy to Siri AI as other companies do to their chatbots: limited usage for free, with heavier users requiring a monthly subscription.
