Apple Home AI camera features cost up to $60 a month
Apple brings Apple Intelligence to HomeKit Secure Video in iOS 27 and tvOS 27, with pricing reaching up to $59.99 a month for five cameras.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
- Apple is adding Apple Intelligence features to HomeKit Secure Video in iOS 27 and tvOS 27
- New AI tools include video summaries, clip search, and multi-camera footage stitching
- Pricing starts at $9.99 a month for one camera and jumps to $59.99 a month for five cameras
- Costs are significantly higher than competitors like Amazon Ring and Google Nest at around $20 a month
With the public rollout of iOS 27 and tvOS 27, Apple Home is integrating Apple Intelligence capabilities, introducing advanced AI features to HomeKit Secure Video users at a notably steep price tag.
The new Apple Intelligence upgrades bring AI-powered video summaries, offering concise text descriptions and clips detailing what and who compatible security cameras detected. Additional features include a streamlined video search tool and the ability to stitch footage from multiple cameras into a single, unified clip for easier home monitoring.
However, accessing these AI capabilities requires subscribing to the 2TB iCloud Plus plan at $9.99 a month, or an Apple One Premier subscription at $39.95 a month, which covers AI features for just one camera. According to an Apple support page, adding Apple Intelligence to a second camera requires upgrading to the 6TB plan at $29.99 a month, while supporting up to five cameras costs a massive $59.99 a month for the 12TB tier. Apple has not yet specified if users can add more than five cameras, though HomeKit camera recordings do not count against personal storage quotas.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
"While the improved video features are useful — I've been testing them in beta and have been impressed — they're not good enough to justify that big a price jump."
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, senior smart home reviewer at The Verge who tested the features in beta, noted that while the enhanced video capabilities are impressive, they fall short of justifying such a dramatic price increase compared to the original HomeKit Secure Video paywall that historically started at just $1 a month for a 50GB plan.
Apple's tiered pricing model for these AI features demonstrates a distinct approach to bundling cloud infrastructure with high-end artificial intelligence processing. Requiring users to pay substantial annual fees for smart home intelligence forces consumers to carefully weigh the convenience of advanced video automation against recurring long-term subscription costs.
By comparison, Amazon’s Ring and Google Nest charge roughly $20 a month for subscription tiers that bundle similar AI-driven camera features, often offering broader device ecosystems. While iCloud Plus plans also provide storage for device backups, photos, and files, Apple has yet to outline additional perks tied to higher tiers.
The silver lining is that existing HomeKit Secure Video features remain unaffected, and software updates bring underlying speed improvements, reliability enhancements, and 4K video resolution support. Yet, when evaluated strictly against the steep pricing structure, the overall value proposition of Apple Intelligence for Home remains questionable.
Source: The Verge
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