Apple confirms iCloud+ 2TB requirement for AI-powered Home camera features

Apple is drawing a clearer line around which of its incoming AI features will cost extra. A note buried in the latest macOS 27 Golden Gate beta confirms that the smart-home AI features landing in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 will require an iCloud+ subscription at the 2TB tier or above.

The features target Apple’s Home app and its HomeKit Secure Video system. With the AI upgrade enabled, the Home app will generate text summaries for motion alerts, stitch feeds from multiple cameras into a single activity overview, surface the clips most worth watching, and let users search the footage using natural language. Instead of scrolling through days of recordings looking for movement, a homeowner could type something like “when did the dog come inside?” and get an answer.

Apple teased some of these capabilities at WWDC but left the pricing ambiguous — “certain Apple Intelligence features require an iCloud+ subscription” was as specific as it got. The macOS 27 beta notes remove that ambiguity. The 2TB iCloud+ plan costs $9.99 a month and, beyond the storage, now unlocks this entire AI feature suite in the Home app.

HomeKit Secure Video has always required a paid iCloud tier. The 50GB plan supports one camera, the 200GB plan handles up to five, and the 2TB plan — the one now required for the AI features — already removes the camera cap entirely. What’s new is that the video storage has never counted against the iCloud quota, so the full 2TB remains available for photos, documents, and backups. The AI processing layer on top is what Apple is now tying to the top-tier subscription.

This is one of the first clear signals of how Apple plans to monetize its Apple Intelligence push. The base tier of AI features — Writing Tools, Genmoji, Image Playground — come bundled with the device. But the deeper integrations, especially the ones that chew through cloud compute like video analysis, are going behind the iCloud+ paywall. The question now is whether this is a one-off or a template for future AI features.