Apple aims to boost Siri’s news accuracy with pay-per-use licensing deals with publishers

Apple is negotiating multi-year licensing agreements with major news outlets to improve Siri’s live news accuracy and reliability, moving away from web scraping towards vetted reporting under a pay-per-use model amid concerns over AI misinformation and trust.

Apple is reported to be negotiating multi-year licensing deals with major news publishers as it tries to make Siri more accurate on live news and less prone to invention. According to reports from CNET-style coverage and Tom’s Guide, the plan would give Apple access to vetted reporting from recognised outlets rather than relying on indiscriminate web scraping, which has become a growing source of concern for AI systems that summarise or answer questions from current events.

The commercial structure appears to be unusual. Rather than a single annual fee, Apple is said to be considering a pay-per-use model, with publishers paid a micro-fee each time their material is used. MacRumors reported previously that Apple had already approached publishers including Condé Nast and IAC about broader AI licensing arrangements, with some early proposals valued at more than $50 million. In that earlier round of talks, publishers were said to be wary of the scope of the deals and unclear about how the material would be used.

The push comes after Apple faced embarrassment over inaccurate AI-generated summaries, a problem that has sharpened internal concern about trust and provenance. The company has long marketed Siri as a privacy-conscious assistant, and in January 2025 it said Siri data had never been sold for marketing and that recordings were used only to improve the service. That message has been complicated by earlier controversy: in 2019, The Guardian reported that contractors had listened to Siri recordings as part of a grading programme, and in 2025 Apple agreed to a $95 million settlement over claims that Siri had captured private conversations without consent.

There is also a broader strategic question about whether sourcing news from established publishers will make Siri feel more reliable or merely more traditional. Tom’s Guide noted that younger users often get news from social platforms and creators rather than newspapers or broadcasters, which raises the risk that a publisher-led model could miss how many people now consume breaking information. Separately, MacRumors reported in 2025 that Apple’s next-generation Siri could be powered by Google’s Gemini models, underlining how central outside technology may become to Apple’s efforts to rebuild the assistant around more dependable responses.