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 Siri.
- Instead of fixed licensing fees standard across the industry, Apple proposed a variable, pay-per-use compensation model.
- Apple's budget for publisher payments could reach nine figures, meaning at least $100 million.
- An upgraded Siri with access to current news is expected to launch later in 2025.
Apple wants Siri to answer questions about today's news, and it's 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. It wants to give Siri a pipeline to fresh 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 surfaces in a Siri response. That's a meaningful departure from how the industry normally works.
Most AI companies that licence news content pay a fixed sum for broad access, regardless of whether an article ever appears in a user conversation. Apple's model works more like a royalty: a publisher earns something only when Siri draws on their material. The budget under consideration is at least $100 million, though the payment formula is 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'll likely get a shrug. Live publisher content is meant to fix that.
As we reported on 3 August, the new Siri is genuinely better, but it arrives in a world where rivals can already write code and reason through complex tasks. Connecting it to real-time news would be the most visible everyday improvement Apple could hand ordinary users. And with paid tiers for heavy AI users already planned, Apple has clear commercial reasons to make Siri genuinely useful before charging more for it. The upgraded assistant is expected to reach users later this year.
What happens next?
Nothing is final. Apple didn't respond to a request for comment, and the negotiations could still shift on 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 widely used, or far less if users rarely ask questions that pull from their content. It's a bet on Siri's reach. For Apple, landing these agreements would help Siri compete with assistants from Google and OpenAI that already draw on live web content.
The thing worth watching here isn't the dollar figure. It's whether publishers accept uncertainty over guarantees, because that choice will shape how every AI company negotiates content deals going forward.
