For Siri AI to respond to current events this fall, Apple needs reliable news sources. The company is therefore negotiating multi-year contracts with publishers – and proposing a compensation model that differs from what the AI industry has offered so far. A nine-figure budget is under discussion.
The AI relaunch of the assistant is imminent: Siri AI will arrive this fall with iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 Golden Gate. What the system will be able to do has been largely known since its unveiling in June – what remained unclear until now was where it would obtain its knowledge about current events.
A report in the Wall Street Journal now provides an answer. According to the report, Apple is in talks with several publishing houses about licensing agreements that would give the assistant access to current news and information.
Key Facts at a Glance
- Apple is negotiating multi-year contracts with publishers for access to current news content.
- A usage-based payment system is proposed: money flows when content is actually used.
- A nine-figure budget is being discussed, meaning at least 100 million dollars.
- Apple declined to comment on the report.
- Siri AI will not launch in Germany and Austria this fall, but it will launch in Switzerland.
A compensation model that goes against the industry standard
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Apple is proposing a variable compensation model. Partner publishers would be paid only when their content is actually used – not a flat fee for access to the entire library.
The opposite is usually the case. Contracts between AI companies and news outlets typically involve fixed sums for broad access to content, regardless of how often an individual article ultimately appears in a response.
For publishers, the model has two sides. It links revenues to actual exploitation, but makes income harder to plan than a fixed annual sum.
Why Apple relies on licenses instead of courts
The industry is divided on this issue. While some publishers are suing – the New York Times is taking legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft – others have signed licensing agreements, including News Corp and the Berlin-based publisher Axel Springer.
Apple already has experience in this area. The company has been working with publishers on Apple News+ since 2019 and had previously entered into agreements that also included rights to AI training.
Things didn't always go smoothly. Several partners expressed dissatisfaction with the terms and ended their collaboration – CNN withdrew from Apple News at the end of 2025.
The reason for Apple's caution dates back a year and a half
The reason why the company is particularly careful with news content became clear in January 2025. The AI-generated notification summaries had incorrectly reproduced headlines from the BBC, New York Times and Washington Post – in one case, the system falsely reported that a suspect had shot himself.
Apple disabled the feature for news and entertainment apps with iOS 18.3 and only brought it back over a year later; since then, it has been shown in italics. Reporters Without Borders had explicitly called for its removal.
This reluctance also characterizes the new system: Siri AI rejects summarizing individual websites on command, rather than evaluating arbitrary sources without verification. Licensed content is the antithesis of this – paid for, secured, and with a clearly identifiable origin.
How much of this actually reaches the German-speaking world
For users in Germany and Austria, the announcement has little practical consequence for now, because Siri AI won't even launch there this fall: The Digital Markets Act blocks its release on iPhone and iPad. The situation is different in Switzerland – the country is neither in the EU nor the EEA, the DMA doesn't apply there, and Siri AI is available.
There is also a second gap. Apple News is not available in German-speaking countries; an international expansion has been under discussion since the beginning of 2025, so far without result. The publishing relationships that Apple can rely on in the US simply don't exist here.
The relationship between Apple and the German publishing industry is already strained. Several publishing houses have been calling for sanctions against the company for years because of its app tracking transparency framework.
How reliable is the information?
The report is based on unnamed sources familiar with the talks; Apple declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal has a good track record with negotiations of this kind, but ongoing talks are not a signed contract – the scope, partners, and terms can still change before a deal is finalized.
We expect Apple to refrain from publicly disclosing the names and amounts of its initial deals. The terms of Apple News+ were also never disclosed, and a usage-based model gives each partner a separate price – this is difficult to explain once the figures are compared.
What this move reveals about Apple's AI strategy
Paid licenses are the expensive way. Competitors cover current events primarily via web search, which is cheaper and requires no negotiations – but produces precisely the kinds of errors that Apple has already had publicly demonstrated.
For an assistant that will launch on hundreds of millions of devices this fall, the calculation is understandable: A nine-figure sum spread over several years weighs less heavily than a second round of false headlines bearing Apple's name. (Image: Apfelpatient)
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