Apple wants publishers to help make Siri smarter

Apple is reportedly engaging in talks with news publishers to sign multiyear deals that would grant the tech giant access to their content to enhance its AI-powered Siri voice assistant. According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple has been reaching out to publishers in recent months as preparations for a significant AI upgrade to Siri later this year progress. Proposed agreements would permit Apple to utilize publishers' current news and information to bolster the revamped assistant's capabilities.

The compensation model for participating publishers is expected to be variable, with payments contingent on the usage of their content. The Wall Street Journal also suggests that Apple has been contemplating a budget of several hundred million dollars for these payments. This proposed arrangement diverges from conventional AI content-licensing deals between tech companies and news organizations, which generally involve fixed fees for broad access to publishers' content rather than payments based on individual usage.

Apple's discussions with publishers arise as the company endeavors to tackle long-standing criticism regarding Siri's inferiority compared to competing AI assistants. The tech giant has unveiled a major Siri upgrade aimed at seamlessly integrating AI into users' interactions with its devices and services. Notably, Apple has a history of compensating publishers for content access, including agreements that granted it rights to utilize material for AI training purposes, as per sources familiar with those arrangements cited by the WSJ.

Additionally, the company has collaborated with publishers through Apple News+, its paid news and magazine subscription service launched in 2019. News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal, is among the early participants in Apple News+, having signed a commercial agreement to supply news through Apple services.

Apple's pursuit of using publisher content for AI development follows an earlier setback. In late 2024, the company initiated testing of AI-generated news summaries for users, a feature that produced inaccurate headlines, eliciting concerns from publishers and leading Apple to disable the feature.