Apple will allow users pay to increase their AI limits, with upgrade possibilities available through iCloud+. Apple CEO Tim Cook said during the company’s earnings call for the third quarter of 2026 on Thursday.
“In terms of what it means for compute cost, it’s obviously early going for us, and so I don’t want to say that we have a complete plan for that,” he said. “We do believe there will be people that want to use it a lot and we will have some kind of upgrade possibilities on iCloud+ where people can buy up the stack on iCloud+. We’ll see how the pickup for that is.”
Apparently, while basic Apple Intelligence features will remain free on supported devices, heavy cloud-based tasks like image generation in Image Playground will have caps with specialized features requiring high-tier storage plans.
Currently, generating motion alert summaries and intelligent video search in the Home app requires a 2TB iCloud+ plan ($9.99/month) or higher. Cook indicated that power users who need extra AI capacity will be able to “buy up the stack” through paid iCloud+ upgrade paths.
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