GoKawiilLance Whitney/ZDNET
ZDNET’s key takeaways
Apple will limit your use of Siri AI and other AI features.
Limits will be based on the feature, your request, and other factors.
Run past your limit and you’ll have to pay for extended use.
Imagine this scenario. You’ve just upgraded your iPhone to iOS 27 and you’re chomping at the bit to check out all the cool new AI features. You want to chat back and forth with Siri AI. You want to try the new editing tools on all your photos. You want to cook up a bunch of clever images with Image Playground.
Ah, not so fast. Apple’s AI doesn’t come free, at least not if you use it a lot.
Generative AI is still mostly cloud-based, meaning that most of the processing runs on backend servers. Depending on how many people are tapping into AI, those servers can get bogged down juggling all the tasks thrown at them. That workload can hamper performance, leading to an unhappy experience for all those people.
Also: iOS 27 release date confirmed: 9 things your iPhone can do once you update
With that in mind, Apple is alerting users of its new AI features that they can run into limitations. In a support article published Wednesday, the company stated up front that the latest Apple Intelligence features rely on powerful server-side models and therefore have usage limits to ensure a reliable experience for everyone.
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