Axios reports that Apple has been sued for false advertising over Apple Intelligence. Now, if you remember, Apple Intelligence launched last October as a built-in feature of Apple's iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1. Pretty quickly, things got off to a rocky start.
For example, notification summaries, a feature in Apple Intelligence that summarizes your notifications for you, in true LLM fashion, summarized a BBC headline and falsely claimed that the UnitedHealthcare CEO's alleged murderer, Luigi Mangione, had killed himself; prompting a response from Apple and a pause in notification summaries for news apps.
The class-action lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court, Northern District of California, San Jose Division, accuses Apple of false advertising, fraud, and breach of contract, among other things. The plaintiff, Peter Landsheft, claims Apple misled consumers into buying the iPhone 16 lineup based on AI features that do not exist or at least not yet.
The lawsuit alleges Apple knew the features were not ready but went ahead with the marketing blitz anyway. The lawsuit points to Apple’s aggressive marketing campaign, which painted Apple Intelligence as a game-changer. Consumers were told they would be getting a significantly upgraded Siri with deep personalization, cross-app awareness, and more advanced natural language understanding.
Apple made big promises about how Siri could find a podcast episode a friend recommended even if it was mentioned in a text or email, cross-reference flight details with live tracking to give updated arrival times, and take hundreds of new actions across Apple and third-party apps, like pulling up a specific article from a reading list or sending photos from a recent event to a specific contact. But according to the lawsuit:
Recently, under mounting pressure from outraged consumers and industry scrutiny, Apple was forced to acknowledge that the heralded Apple Intelligence features, including the Siri enhancements that fueled the greatest consumer excitement, did not exist then and do not exist now.
The lawsuit also claims that if these features ever materialize, it will not be until 2026, leaving those who bought an iPhone 16 under false pretenses stuck with a phone that does not do what Apple said it would.
Some of the major Apple Intelligence features that were hyped but remain unavailable include the upgraded Siri experience, which reports suggest might not be ready until 2027 at the earliest, Priority Notifications, which was supposed to smartly filter and surface only the most important alerts, Genmoji on Mac, which allows custom emoji generation but is still missing for Mac users, Sketch Style for Image Playground, an AI-generated art style that has been announced but not yet released, and expanded language support, which is currently limited to English with broader availability delayed to April 2025 at the earliest.
The lawsuit argues that Apple’s marketing misled people into thinking these features would be available at launch, making the iPhone 16 a must-have device, while buyers instead got what the complaint calls a "mirage of innovation."
The plaintiff and the proposed class are seeking monetary damages, essentially refunds for customers who purchased new Apple devices expecting the promised AI features. They are also demanding injunctive relief, which would require Apple to stop its allegedly misleading marketing about Apple Intelligence. In addition to that, the lawsuit seeks punitive damages to penalize Apple for what it describes as “malicious, oppressive, and fraudulent conduct.”
So far, Apple has not publicly commented on the lawsuit, but given how much fire they are under from both regulators and consumers, it would not be surprising if they quietly settle this one.
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