Apple is in talks with major publishers to license current news content for Siri, aiming to overhaul its AI assistant with live, verified reporting, potentially costing hundreds of millions of dollars and marking a shift towards more reliable live responses.
Apple is preparing to make Siri more useful for breaking news, with the company said to be in talks with major publishers over licensing arrangements that would let the assistant draw on current reporting rather than stale web snippets. The move would support a broader overhaul of Siri that is expected to reach beta later this year and is designed to make the assistant better at understanding context, recognising what is on a user’s screen and moving between apps. Reuters-style reporting from The Wall Street Journal says Apple has been exploring publisher deals as part of that effort.
The cost could be substantial. The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple may be willing to set aside a nine-figure sum for news access, and that the company would pay publishers each time Siri used their material. That is a more direct model than many artificial intelligence licensing arrangements, in which publishers receive limited compensation or none at all. The exact terms remain unclear, and Apple has not publicly confirmed which outlets are involved in the discussions.
The timing reflects how much Apple is already investing in Siri’s next generation. MacRumors reported in January that Apple had entered a multi-year partnership with Google to use Gemini models in Siri and Apple Intelligence, with one report estimating the arrangement at as much as $5 billion. In January, Tim Cook also described how the system would work, saying Siri would continue to run on Apple hardware and Private Cloud Compute to preserve the company’s privacy approach, even as it draws on Google’s technology.
That broader AI push comes after Apple faced criticism over earlier notification summaries that were sometimes inaccurate or misleading when applied to news. Those summaries were later withdrawn for news and entertainment apps after complaints from publishers. For Apple, the new talks suggest a more cautious approach: if Siri is going to answer live questions about current events, it may need licensed, verified content rather than generated guesses. Publishers, meanwhile, are still trying to determine how much value they can extract from AI systems, with some already striking deals and others, including The New York Times, choosing litigation.
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