Apple could charge a subscription fee of up to $20 per month for premium features in its upcoming Apple Intelligence AI system, according to industry analysts. The tech giant aims to bolster its services revenue through this potential fee.
Set to launch later this year, Apple Intelligence will initially be free but could transition to a tiered model similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus or Microsoft’s AI Copilot. While Apple has a history of offering free software updates, analysts suggest the company may follow the industry trend of monetizing advanced AI capabilities.
Neil Shah, partner at Counterpoint Research, said investment in AI is expensive and Apple will want to pass that cost onto its users.
“Software and services makes it more lucrative for Apple to pass it on with the Apple One subscription model,” Shah told CNBC in an interview last week.
Apple One costs $19.95 a month and gives users access to various Apple services including Apple Music.
Shah said Apple could charge between $10 and $20 for Apple Intelligence, potentially as part of Apple One, for more premium AI features.
“Apple is one of the few connected devices companies that has successfully monetized the value-added services it offers,” Ben Wood, chief of research at CCS Insight, told CNBC this week.
“As a result, it has set a precedent with its users that they have to pay for more premium services. On this basis, it can’t be ruled out that Apple may choose to charge for more advanced features within its Apple Intelligence offering.”
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MacDailyNews Take: Plus, as Apple Intelligence learns about each user, securely on-device, it becomes ever more personalized increasing the stickiness of Apple’s already-very-sticky ecosystem.
Current Apple One rates:
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Apple is so far away from AI worth paying for that this seems like an absolute pipe dream as its own feature. Nobody is paying extra money for the ability to summarize emails and web pages. Now, will they add it on as a feature to Apple One’s upper tier packages to justify charging more for them, letting AI ride the coattails of actually useful features? Sure, that’s possible.
100% agree. What they release will be garbage for 3 to 5 years by the way good luck with it just another subscription which I personally won’t buy into all this subscription BS is just utter nonsense
ChatGPT alone is a $20/month subscription. Apple can justify an extra fee for that (integrated into Apple’s ecosystem) on top of whatever features they create themselves. It’s less the charging for it that I dislike than the fact that they have yet to prove anything and nothing about a subscription was mentioned at WWDC. They’re probably leaking this info as a trial balloon to see what people’s reactions are. I could see the AI features being free for the first 6-12 months when you buy a new iPhone 15 Pro or better then as a part of a subscription after.
The only subscription from Apple I pay for is iCloud+, nothing else is worth it.
Pay to rent music? Never.
Pay to rent games? Get a life.
Pay for AppleTV? That’s funny.
Pay for Fitness and News? Be serious.
Now, I would pay for a larger iMac instead of continuing to use my intel 27″. Also, I would pay for a larger iPad pro type setup to replace my large Cintiq. But no, Timmy simply goes after the low hanging fruit and doesn’t really care about what customers want.
I only rent iCloud extra space and looking for a way to dump it too. No other renting for me for software. Including MS Office garbage and all Adobe pay-as-you-go garbage.
After 12 years of Siri being an utter embarrassment and disgrace to the Apple brand and really never having been improved much, Apple is in no position to charge for AI services unless they want to increase the ill will they have already earned.
Gotta find some quarters for the billions lost with Goog search agreement…especially when Matt Damon and other fossil actors aren’t bringing it.