Apple Intelligence Lawsuits Mounting 

Almost a year ago, Apple introduced Apple Intelligence, which the company claimed at the time would usher in a “new era” of its AI-powered voice assistant Siri.

To highlight the capabilities of a “more personal Siri” made possible by AI enhancements with Apple Intelligence, a few months later Apple debuted a national TV ad for its iPhone 16 Pro featuring “The Last of Us” star Bella Ramsey.

In the ad, shown above, Ramsey struggles to remember the name of an acquaintance who is heading over for a chat. Ramsey quickly consults with Siri, which steps in to prevent an awkward encounter with the mystery man.

“You met Zac Wingate at Cafe Grenel a couple of months ago,” Siri answers, apparently pulling the information from a calendar event entered into Ramsey’s phone.

Combining generative AI with personal context to deliver intelligence that’s both “helpful and relevant” was one of the key marketing claims for Apple Intelligence when it was announced in June 2024.

But nearly a year later, many of the “core features” of Apple Intelligence that were used to advertise the iPhone 16 lineup – including an enhanced Siri that can search for the name of an individual the user met several months ago with a simple voice command – “either do not exist or do not perform” as advertised.

That’s according to the lead case in a consolidated class-action lawsuit combining five complaints filed against Apple in recent months over its delayed rollout of Apple Intelligence features for the iPhone 16.

“Apple’s advertisements saturated the internet, television, and other airwaves to cultivate a clear and reasonable consumer expectation that these transformative features would be available upon the iPhone’s release,” the complaint alleges.

This drove unprecedented excitement in the market, even for Apple, as the company knew it would, and as part of Apple’s ongoing effort to convince consumers to upgrade at a premium price and to distinguish itself from competitors deemed to be winning the AI-arms race.

The lawsuit cites a number of Apple Intelligence features that Apple advertised but allegedly failed to deliver for iPhone 16 users, including:

• “With Apple Intelligence, Siri can draw on a user’s personal context to answer questions.”
• “Siri will be able to deliver intelligence that’s tailored to the user and their on-device information. For example, a user can say, ‘Play that podcast that Jamie recommended,’ and Siri will locate and play the episode, without the user having to remember whether it was mentioned in a text or an email. Or they could ask, ‘When is Mom’s flight landing?’ and Siri will find the flight details and cross-reference them with real-time flight tracking to give an arrival time.”
• “With Apple Intelligence, Siri will be able to take hundreds of new actions in and across Apple and third-party apps. For example, a user could say, ‘Bring up that article about cicadas from my Reading List,’ or ‘Send the photos from the barbecue on Saturday to Malia,’ and Siri will take care of it.”

The complaint was filed on March 19, just days after an Apple spokesperson was quoted as saying that while Apple Intelligence has made Siri “more conversational” and enabled new features like ChatGPT integration, a “more personalized Siri” that has “the ability to take action for you within and across your apps” is still a work in progress.

Meanwhile, a sixth lawsuit against Apple that is not a part of the consolidated case cites alleged comments made by Cook on a May 1 earnings call regarding the company needing “more time to complete our work” and that “it’s just taking a bit longer than we thought” to deliver on the promised AI features for the iPhone 16.

Apple did not respond to TINA.org’s request for comment.

The bottom line

Companies, especially sophisticated tech companies like Apple, are aware of the growing consumer demand for products equipped with artificial intelligence. However, marketing AI features based on technology that isn’t fully developed or proven is a recipe for litigation.

Find more of our coverage on artificial intelligence.