The company appears to be attempting to secure access to new content and other information.
Apple is in negotiations with news publishers to use their content to strengthen Siri AI, according to The Wall Street Journal. In recent months, the company has reportedly contacted media companies to offer them new multi-year deals that would allow it to use their content to deliver news and other information through its redesigned personal assistant. Siri AI is expected to be released with iOS 27 when it becomes available to the public later this year.
THE Newspaper did not reveal the specific publishers Apple contacted, but noted that the company had proposed structuring the payments around a variable pay plan, which would allow it to pay these organizations when their content is used. In contrast, most large AI labs like OpenAI typically offer guaranteed fees in exchange for broad access. According to the The ReviewApple has paid publishers for access to their content in the past under previous deals that allowed the company to obtain AI training rights.
The move comes as Apple prepares to release Siri AI to the public. The company first announced the redesigned Assistant at WWDC 2024, before it promptly disappeared for two years and resurfaced at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference. Apple has partnered with Google to distill the company’s Gemini models for Siri AI. In Woozad’s early testing of Siri AI, the digital assistant was a major improvement over the version most consumers currently have access to, but it was hard not to feel like Apple still has a lot of catching up to do. The company clearly recognizes that it still has work to do before it can call its work on Siri complete.
