Tim Cook suggests extra charges could be coming for Siri users that fall under one criteria
It has been suggested by the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, that extra charges could be coming for Siri users that fall under one particular criteria.
This comes after the tech giant announced a major revamp for its virtual assistant which will now be known as Siri AI.
As part of the highly anticipated iOS 27, Siri will become a ‘profoundly more capable and conversational assistant with personal context understanding, broad world knowledge, and onscreen awareness’.
On the website, Apple explains: “Siri AI can help users find what they need in the moment, from answering questions from the web on virtually any topic, to surfacing relevant information from a user’s personal messages, emails, photos, and more.
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“Siri AI also includes a dedicated app for users to revisit conversations across their products, an expanded Visual Intelligence experience, and integrated tools for writing.
“With a bold new architecture uniquely designed to protect users’ privacy, Siri AI leverages the next generation of Apple Intelligence to bring state-of-the-art understanding and reasoning, along with powerful system-wide capabilities, to Apple’s operating systems. These features are available for developer testing starting today, and will be available as a beta to users later this year.”
Who could be expected to pay for Siri?
However, there could be some bad news for Siri users as Cook has suggested that 'heavy users' might need to pay extra charges to access the feature.
During an earnings call, Cook, who is expected to leave the company at the end of August, said that users who utilize Siri a lot may face an iCloud+ subscription paywall.
The CEO said: “We do believe there will be people that want to use it a lot, and so we will have some kind of upgrade possibilities on iCloud+.”
Although, it might end up being worth the added fee for some users as Craig Federighi, who is Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, explained: “We’re excited to introduce Siri AI, a dramatically more capable and conversational assistant designed to help users find information and get things done throughout the day.
“With access to broad world knowledge for up-to-date answers on virtually any topic, along with onscreen awareness and personal context understanding, Siri AI can help users take action across apps more naturally than ever.”
The earnings call, which took place yesterday (July 30), is expected to be Cook’s final one before he resigns on September 1. He is set to be succeeded by John Ternus, who is currently the Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering at Apple.