Two switches decide what Apple's AI can do with a page, and they are not the same switch. One stops Apple training its foundation models on the content. The other stops the page being used as live context when Siri AI builds an answer. Siri AI is the rebuilt Apple assistant that pulls current information from the web, writes a conversational answer and may link to the sources it used. For publishers, that makes Apple a fourth answer surface to plan for, after Google, OpenAI and Perplexity, with one important difference: the crawling is already running, the opt-outs already exist, and the reporting does not.
What is Siri AI?
Siri AI is the new Siri that Apple announced at WWDC in June 2026. Apple describes it as a more capable, conversational assistant that can use live web information to answer questions on a wide range of topics, with follow-up questions in the same conversation. It also appears in Spotlight on iPad and Mac, and a dedicated Siri app syncs conversations through iCloud (Search Engine Journal, 13 June 2026).
The assistant is built on Google's Gemini models. Apple and Google issued a joint statement in January 2026 saying Gemini would form the foundation of the next generation of Apple Foundation Models (Search Engine Journal). Apple's own press material for Siri AI does not name Google.
When can people actually use it?
Siri AI launched in beta on 14 September 2026 with iOS 27, in English first. It now supports French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish, with more languages promised (PPC Land, 4 November 2026). It is not available on iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch in the EU, and not available in China pending regulatory requirements. Apple says server-side features are subject to daily usage limits and that expanded access will be available for a fee in future.
Scale is still a reasonable planning assumption. Apple reported an installed base of more than 2.5 billion active devices in January 2026 (AppleInsider, 29 January 2026). Not every device runs Apple Intelligence or Siri AI, so that figure is a ceiling on reach, not a user count.
On 3 November 2026 Apple opened a developer preview that lets any app connect to Siri AI through App Intents. That affects apps, not websites, but one detail matters here: PPC Land notes that websites are included by default unless the owner opts out, while apps reach the custom-action layer only when the developer opts in.
What did Apple change about Applebot?
On 8 June 2026 Apple rewrote its About Applebot documentation. The page now says crawled data may be used to train Apple foundation models for generative features, and may also supply up-to-date context when models generate answers in Apple products (Search Engine Roundtable; SEO Handbook, 10 September 2026). Applebot already crawls and indexes, whether or not a given feature is live in a user's region.
Two uses follow from that. Training is long-term: content fetched today can shape model behaviour later. Retrieval is immediate: a page is read to support a specific answer. Each has its own control, and a publisher who handles one has not handled the other.
What controls do publishers have?
Apple's support page documents four relevant controls.
- Applebot-Extended. A separate user agent that does not crawl pages itself. Disallowing it in robots.txt opts content out of training Apple's general-purpose foundation models. Apple states that its rules are not considered in Search ranking, and that pages can still appear in search results.
- nosnippet. Apple says it will not use data tagged nosnippet as context for AI-generated output, and Applebot will not generate a description or web answer for that page. Apple notes the page may still be crawled. Because nosnippet is respected by other engines, applying it widely also changes snippets elsewhere.
- isAccessibleForFree set to false. For paywalled, metered or subscription pages in JSON-LD. These pages can appear in search but their content is not used as AI context. The signal works at page level only, and hasPart section markup is not supported.
- Blocking Applebot itself. This removes the site from Spotlight, Siri and Safari search features, so it is a blunt instrument.
Two technical notes. Apple says Applebot does not follow crawl-delay; it adjusts its rate when a site slows down or returns errors. And per Search Engine Journal, if robots.txt has no Applebot rules but does have Googlebot rules, Applebot follows the Googlebot rules. Publishers with a Googlebot-only configuration may therefore be setting Apple policy without intending to.
Will Siri AI send traffic back?
Nobody outside Apple can say yet. Apple's documentation says web answers may include links to sources, but Apple does not say when links appear, how often, or how a site could measure them (Search Engine Journal). There is no Siri equivalent of Search Console, and no published figure for Siri citations or click-through. Third-party traffic datasets cited by SEJ, from SparkToro and SE Ranking, do not measure Siri.
That gap matters for a practical reason. Server logs are the only way to see Applebot crawl activity, and they show fetches, not answers. A publisher can see that Apple read a page. It cannot see whether Siri used it, cited it or sent anyone to it.
What should publishers do now?
Start with an audit rather than a reaction. Check what robots.txt says about Applebot and Applebot-Extended, because without an explicit rule the default is inclusion. Decide separately on training and on live answers, and record the reason, since the commercial trade-offs differ. Review whether paywalled pages carry isAccessibleForFree markup. Then watch logs for Applebot request volumes so there is a baseline before Apple publishes anything.
On the citation side, nothing Apple has published suggests Siri AI needs a bespoke content approach. The practices that help in other AI answer systems - direct answers, verifiable facts, clear headings and attributable sourcing - are the sensible starting point, with the caveat that Apple has not documented how Siri AI selects sources.
The wider issue is one Siri AI sharpens rather than creates. When an AI system reads a page to answer a question, the read happens server-side and never fires client-side analytics or an ad call. Infrastructure that sees agent requests at the CDN edge, as blankspace's does for Live Search Agents, can show how much of that retrieval is happening. Whether Apple's retrieval will ever be paid for is a question Apple has not addressed.
Frequently asked questions
Is Siri AI available to everyone yet?
No. It has been in beta since 14 September 2026, in English first and now in a handful of further languages. It is not available on iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch in the EU, nor in China. Apple also applies undisclosed daily usage limits to server-side features and says expanded access will cost money in future.
Does Siri AI use Google's Gemini?
Apple and Google said in January 2026 that Gemini would form the foundation for the next generation of Apple Foundation Models. Apple's Siri AI press release does not name Google, and the exact split between on-device models, Apple's cloud and Gemini-based models has not been confirmed by Apple in the sources reviewed here.
Does blocking Applebot-Extended stop Siri from using my content in answers?
No. Applebot-Extended controls training of Apple's foundation models. Live answer context is controlled separately, through nosnippet or, for paywalled pages, isAccessibleForFree set to false. Publishers who want to opt out of both uses need to apply both controls.
Will opting out hurt my Apple search visibility?
Apple says Applebot-Extended rules are not considered in Search ranking, so blocking it should carry no ranking cost. Using nosnippet stops Apple generating descriptions and web answers for that page, so it can change how the page appears in Apple search. Blocking Applebot entirely removes the site from Spotlight, Siri and Safari search features.
Can publishers see how often Siri AI cites them?
Not at present. Apple provides no reporting for Siri AI citations or clicks. Server logs show Applebot crawling, which is useful as a baseline, but they do not show whether a page was used in an answer or linked to a user.