The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has been pursuing content deals worth up to nine figures to improve Siri AI’s access to current news and information. Here are the details.

Apple seeks deals with publishers for Siri AI

In a report published today, The Wall Street Journal says that Apple has been reaching out to publishers to secure multiyear deals that would provide Siri AI with access to current events and information.

From the report:

Apple has proposed a variable compensation plan, with payments made to partner publishers when their content is used, some of the people said. The company has discussed a possible nine-figure budget for the payments, they said.

Apple’s move comes as publishers increasingly choose between fighting AI companies in court and licensing their content to them. The New York Times, for instance, is currently suing OpenAI and Microsoft over alleged unauthorized use of their work to train AI models, while publishers including News Corp and Axel Springer have instead struck content deals with the maker of ChatGPT.

Reddit has also taken both approaches, striking a deal (which is currently under review) with Google in 2024 reportedly worth about $60 million per year to license its content for AI training, while separately suing Anthropic and Perplexity over alleged unauthorized scraping of its data.

Back to the Journal’s report, it notes that such deals wouldn’t be a first for Apple, as the company currently teams up with publishers for Apple News+, and has struck deals that included rights to use publishers’ content for its own AI training.

The WSJ reached out to Apple for comment, but the company declined.

Source: 9to5mac