iOS 27 AI Camera Summaries Cost $9.99 for One Camera, $59.99 for Five

Reporting by The New-England Courant. Read the original report: MacRumors.

Apple is requiring a $9.99 per month iCloud+ plan to use the iOS 27 Apple Intelligence Home app features with a single HomeKit camera, and iPhone users are responding with frustration.

The new iOS 27 capability adds text-based descriptions for motion alerts. It uses Apple Intelligence to recognize people, animals, vehicles, packages, and general motion, then summarizes what is happening at each camera.

During the beta period, testers learned that a 2TB iCloud+ plan or higher would be needed for video summaries, but Apple did not say how many cameras would be covered. Last week, Apple shared those details: the $9.99 per month 2TB plan adds AI summaries to only one camera.

To get AI summaries for two cameras, users must subscribe to the $29.99 per month 6TB iCloud+ plan. Up to five cameras require the $59.99 per month 12TB plan. Apple One Premier subscribers, whose bundle includes 2TB of iCloud+ storage, are also limited to a single camera.

Apple is not offering an iCloud+ plan that provides AI summaries for an unlimited number of cameras. That stands in contrast to existing HomeKit Secure Video recording limits.

HomeKit Secure Video has long required a paid iCloud+ subscription, but its storage-based limits are different: one camera works with the $0.99 per month 50GB plan, five cameras with the $2.99 per month 200GB plan, and unlimited cameras with the $9.99 per month 2TB plan.

As a result, a customer who already pays for a 2TB iCloud+ plan gets no additional camera coverage from the new AI summaries feature.