Apple Home’s new security camera features cost up to $60 a month
The Verge Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Apple is adding AI to HomeKit camera features, but it costs extra. The new tools start at $9.99 a month and can climb to $60.
Based on reporting by The Verge, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy — read the original for the full story.
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Apple is turning its Home app into a paid AI feature, and not in a small way. With iOS 27 and tvOS 27, HomeKit Secure Video is getting Apple Intelligence support, which means your camera clips can come with short text summaries of who or what was seen.
That’s the headline trick: instead of scrubbing through footage, Apple wants the app to tell you what happened. It also adds video search, plus a way to stitch clips from multiple cameras into a single recording. The pitch is convenience. Less hunting, more quick answers.
The catch is the bill. Apple says the new Home Intelligence features sit behind iCloud Plus, starting at $9.99 a month for the 2TB plan, with the price going up to $60 at the top end. So this isn’t just a software update. It’s another reminder that Apple’s smartest features are increasingly tied to recurring subscriptions.
That matters because home security is exactly the kind of thing people want to set up once and forget. Apple is betting that summaries and search are useful enough to justify another monthly charge. Maybe they are. But the company has clearly decided that even your front door deserves a premium tier.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
Apple is doing the classic premium-platform move: take a basic need, wrap it in AI, then rent it back to the customer. The funny part is that security cameras are one of the least glamorous places to discover subscription fatigue, right up there with printer ink and cloud storage. If AI is only useful after another monthly tollbooth, people will notice.
Read more about this at: The Verge