iOS 27 brings AI video summaries to HomeKit Secure Video at up to $59.99 a month

Apple Intelligence comes to Apple Home

Alongside the public release of iOS 27 and tvOS 27, Apple has rolled out its first Apple Intelligence features for Apple Home, according to The Verge. The centerpiece is AI-powered video summaries for HomeKit Secure Video: short text descriptions of who and what a compatible security camera recorded, delivered together with the clip itself. Two related capabilities ship alongside it — a video search function for finding specific moments, and the option to merge footage from multiple cameras into a single clip, so users can review activity around their home without scrubbing through each camera's recordings one by one.

The Verge, which tested the features during the beta period, reports that they work well — but argues the improvement is not significant enough to justify what Apple is charging for access.

The pricing wall

The features sit behind higher iCloud Plus tiers. According to The Verge, the entry point for Apple Intelligence in Apple Home is the 2TB plan at $9.99 a month — or an Apple One Premier subscription at $39.95 a month — and that tier covers a single camera. Enabling the AI features on a second camera requires the 6TB plan at $29.99 a month. Covering up to five cameras means the 12TB plan at $59.99 a month. Apple's support documentation does not say whether more than five cameras can be added, The Verge notes. Recordings from HomeKit-connected cameras do not count against the storage quota.

The Verge breaks down what this means for an existing subscriber: someone already paying $40 a month for Apple One Premier, which includes 2TB of storage and HomeKit Secure Video support for five cameras, would get Apple Intelligence on just one of those cameras. Extending it to all five would cost an additional $60 a month — $720 a year, for a total of roughly $1,200 annually.

How the competition prices it

HomeKit Secure Video has always been a paid service, but it was never this expensive. The Verge notes the service historically started at $1 a month with the 50GB iCloud Plus plan, which covered one camera along with smart alerts and facial recognition, with larger tiers extending coverage to more cameras. By comparison, Amazon's Ring and Google Nest each charge roughly $20 a month for subscriptions that include comparable AI camera features — and, according to The Verge, both companies currently offer more functionality than Apple does here.

There is some bundled value in the plans: an iCloud Plus subscription also covers storage for photos, files and device backups, and higher tiers may raise limits for other Apple Intelligence capabilities. But Apple has not released details on that front, The Verge reports.

What stays the same

For current users, nothing about the existing HomeKit Secure Video offering has changed with the new releases. Beyond the AI additions, the software updates also deliver performance and reliability improvements under the hood, and the service now supports 4K video resolution, according to The Verge.

Why it matters

The release offers a preview of how Apple intends to monetize Apple Intelligence: as a premium add-on tied to storage tiers rather than a baseline enhancement to existing services. At $59.99 a month to cover five cameras, the feature costs more in a single month than several months of Ring's or Nest's comparable subscriptions — and vastly more than HomeKit Secure Video's original $1 entry point. For a company positioning AI as the defining capability of its current software generation, attaching a roughly four-figure annual bill to a mainstream smart home function risks pushing customers toward competitors. It also signals that future Apple Intelligence features may follow the same pay-to-play pattern, something anyone invested in the Apple ecosystem will want to watch closely.