alt Hacker NewsWho is paying for all of this AI usage on the Iphone? I didn't see anything about a new AI subscription (maybe I missed it?), and I doubt Apple will want to pay million/billions a year to do it indefinitely.
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Supposedly they're going to do a fair bit of it on device for privacy reasons, so the only payment for that will be RAM and battery power.
For stuff that can't be run on phones, some of it will be run on Apple's servers, which I'm assuming Apple is eating the cost of for the time being.
Stuff that needs heavy reasoning or external knowledge will be processed by google, in exchange for $1 billion a year. However Google already pays Apple $20 billion a year for google to be the default iOS search engine, so you could view this as just changing to google paying $19 billion a year instead.
Isn't it obvious? They bet on the same level of intelligence will get cheaper and cheaper and it'll be a smaller and smaller fraction of iPhone's profit.
And even if the assumption turns out to be wrong, they can just scale down and serve dumber and cheaper models. Shrinkflation is not a novel idea.
Pricing is looking to be complicated and not clear cut.
Some of it is free on-device. Some of it is free & rate limited per day. They mentioned in the WWDC infomercial that users with iCloud+ (the storage tier subscriptions, Apple likes to throw random things in with that) will be able to get more uses per day. And some of it developers will pay for.
There will be ads/our data.
From Apple's press release: "Some features, including image generation, have daily usage limits because they rely on powerful server models. Increased access is available with most iCloud+ subscription plans, which also include Apple Intelligence support for compatible Home cameras." (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/apple-intelligence-br...)