Apple is discussing multiyear deals with publishers that would let Siri AI use their content for current news and information, according to The Wall Street Journal. Apple has proposed variable compensation, with publishers paid when their content is used, and has discussed a possible nine-figure budget.
The publishers involved and exact payment terms remain undisclosed.
The talks arrive as Apple prepares a broader Siri AI rollout later this year. Apple has confirmed that the assistant can retrieve up-to-date information from the web, but it has not publicly explained how publisher sources would be cited or linked in those answers. Apple declined to comment on the reported negotiations.
Siri AI is being built around current web information
Apple says Siri AI can combine web retrieval with onscreen awareness, personal context, and broad world knowledge to answer questions on virtually any topic. The assistant is available for developer testing across iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, and visionOS 27, with a user beta planned for later this year.
Siri AI will work across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro, although supported devices and regional eligibility vary.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple’s proposal differs from common AI licensing agreements, which offer publishers guaranteed fees for broad access to content. Apple’s model would instead compensate participating publishers when their content is used. The company previously paid publishers in agreements that included AI training rights and has commercial relationships through Apple News+.
The Journal also noted a source-quality concern from Apple’s past. In late 2024, Apple tested AI-generated news summaries that produced erroneous headlines, prompting the company to disable the feature.
Publishers are negotiating as AI changes referral traffic
Apple’s discussions enter a market where publishers are reconsidering how AI companies use their work.
Reddit has reportedly reviewed parts of its Google AI partnership as AI-generated search answers change the economics of web traffic, while Google AI Overviews have faced legal and regulatory scrutiny over publisher content, attribution, and traffic.
Brookings research published in June describes an AI licensing market split between direct deals with major publishers and an intermediary layer offering content marketplaces, bot controls, and pay-per-use models. It found that publishers with direct licensing agreements initially received a click-through advantage from AI interfaces, but that premium had largely disappeared by the fourth quarter of 2025 amid a sixfold decline in AI click-through rates.
For publishers, unresolved terms include attribution, linking, usage reporting, and how variable payments would be calculated. IT and AI-governance teams have a separate concern: whether policies for AI-assisted research account for assistants that retrieve and synthesize live web content across managed devices.
Apple’s planned user beta may provide more visibility into Siri AI’s citation and source-link behavior. It is less likely to reveal the private commercial terms behind any publisher agreements.
Also read: Apple’s iOS 27 beta 2 adds Write with Siri, RCS upgrades, and other changes ahead of the full software rollout.