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The Wall Street Journal says Apple is talking to publishers about multi-year deals. The idea is to let Siri AI use their reporting to answer questions about what’s happening now. Perhaps it will look something like Gemini AI is already doing with Google, but Apple’s budget for this but be even bigger. According to the WSJ report, possibly hundreds of millions, depending on how much of each publisher’s work Siri ends up using.Actually paying publishers is a shift from the usual scrape-now, argue-later routine that’s defined most of the AI industry so far. It means Siri might finally get real reporting and fewer confidently wrong answers.Apple is betting on a new model of the news business
(Image credit: Getty Images)Apple seems to be betting on a version of the news business that doesn’t really match how most people get their information anymore. For instance, Siri can’t just parrot whatever’s trending on X, TikTok or YouTube. Apple needs sources with editors, corrections and someone who actually takes the blame when things go wrong.The company has already learned how quickly AI-generated news can create trouble. Apple suspended notification summaries for news and entertainment apps in early 2025 after Apple Intelligence produced inaccurate summaries of publishers’ alerts. In one widely reported example, it falsely made it appear that the BBC had reported that murder suspect Luigi Mangione had shot himself.Licensing real reporting means Apple can control what Siri says and how it uses that info. Publishers get paid, which matters now that AI answers are making it less likely anyone clicks through to the original version story.For questions such as “What did the Federal Reserve announce?" If you ask Siri what the Fed did today or what’s up with the election, it’s safer to pull from vetted sources than to let Siri riff on whatever’s blowing up on online.er since audiences are finding news somewhere else.People are consuming news through multiple outlets
