Apple is in talks to pay news publishers every time Siri uses their content
Rather than a flat licensing fee, Apple is considering a pay-per-use model for publishers whose articles and news would feed an upgraded Siri. The budget could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Key points
- Apple has approached news publishers in recent months about licensing their content to power a smarter version of Siri, its voice assistant.
- Apple proposed a variable, pay-per-use compensation model rather than the fixed licensing fees that are standard across the industry.
- Apple is considering a nine-figure budget, meaning at least $100 million, for these publisher payments.
- An upgraded Siri with access to current news and information is expected to launch later in 2025.
Apple wants to teach Siri to answer questions about today's news, and it is willing to pay publishers each time it actually uses their work to do so.
The company has been contacting news outlets over the past several months, according to reporting first published by The Wall Street Journal. The goal is to give Siri, Apple's built-in voice assistant, a pipeline to fresh, real-world information rather than the static knowledge baked into its underlying software.
How would publishers get paid?
Instead of a flat annual fee, Apple proposed paying publishers only when their content is used in a Siri response. That is a meaningful shift from how the industry normally works.
Most AI companies that licence news content today pay a fixed sum for broad access, whether or not a single article ever surfaces in a user conversation. Apple's model would be more like a royalty: a publisher earns something only when Siri actually draws on their material to answer a question.
Apple is reportedly weighing a budget of at least $100 million for these payments, though the exact figure and the payment formula are still being negotiated.
What does this mean for people who use Siri?
Right now, Siri struggles with anything time-sensitive. Ask it about a story from this morning and you are likely to get a shrug. The whole point of bringing in live publisher content is to change that.
Apple has been promising a smarter Siri for years. The company showed off an overhauled version at its developer conference in 2024, one that could understand context and handle more complex requests. Connecting it to real-time news would be a visible, everyday improvement for anyone who uses Siri to stay informed.
The upgraded assistant is expected to reach users later this year.
What happens next?
Nothing is final. Apple did not respond to a request for comment, and the negotiations could still shift in terms of which publishers are involved and what the payment structure looks like.
For publishers, the deal presents a genuine dilemma. Fixed licensing fees offer predictable income. A pay-per-use model could pay out more if Siri becomes popular, or far less if users rarely ask the kind of questions that pull from their content. It is a bet on Siri's future reach.
For Apple, landing publisher agreements would help Siri compete with AI assistants from Google, OpenAI and others that already draw on live web content to answer questions.
