Apple's premature Apple Intelligence ad subject of new lawsuit
Apple Intelligence ad target of latest lawsuit
Lawsuits are a dime a dozen in the United States, something Apple is very familiar with. The latest isn't a surprise to those following the Apple Intelligence debacle after a promised feature was delayed into "the coming year."
According to a report from Axios, the lawsuit originated with Clarkson Law Firm in San Jose. It specifically highlights a now-pulled ad featuring Bella Ramsey asking for information about a person she had a meeting with.
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 problem with the entire basis of this lawsuit is that every ad, video, poster, website, or mention of such unreleased features was noted as coming soon. Even the ad in question has a disclaimer in unmissable text stating "some features and languages will be coming over the next year."
Arguably, it's still well within "the next year" at this point. It's tough to say if the San Jose District Court will take on the case or raise it to class action status, especially since the damages can't be easily measured.
Apple did release Apple Intelligence and everything it advertised across iOS 18.1 and iOS 18.2 through December 2024. The only feature that didn't release and has now been delayed is the one shown in the single Bella Ramsey ad.
The disclaimer in the ad may render the whole lawsuit unviable. Image source: Apple
And even then, the disclaimer in the ad has another six months before it is technically incorrect. Apple could release some version of the contextual Apple Intelligence with bare minimum features isolated to Apple apps and render this lawsuit null.
There are a lot of rumors going around that Apple has never had a working version of this functionality, however, that is highly unlikely. An angry meeting that leaked suggested the ad was premature, but never said it wasn't functional, just not ready.
Apple obviously was on track to release the feature with iOS 18.4 since it laid the groundwork for developer adoption in iOS 18.2. However, it seems what pushed the feature back was the world's, and specifically, the BBC's reaction to poorly summarized headlines.
There is no world in which Apple could have released a hallucinating contextual Siri that told people wildly incorrect information 20% of the time. There's already enough hate around Siri and Apple Intelligence without such a disastrous rollout.
Thankfully, Apple had the foresight to delay the feature and shuffle some leadership to ensure such a thing won't happen. The short-term media cycle about Apple being further behind in AI is worth it if the public feature release goes off without a hitch.
It seems highly unlikely that the lawsuit will go through, but crazier things have happened. A judge sympathetic to the lawsuit may determine that the disclaimer text isn't sufficient in preventing consumers from being "tricked."
If this lawsuit does go through, then everyone should get in line and start filing against all the false claims made by all these AI companies. There doesn't seem to be any sentient computers walking around, let alone programs that have upended the economy by stealing jobs.
But that's not important when there's a company out there called Apple to sue.
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Comments
The best way they can counteract this is to quickly ship a super-useful, super-effective, super-private AI-powered Siri, just like the one they pictured in their now-revoked advertisements just a few months ago.
They talked the talk. Now they have to walk the walk. Remember that Apple themselves put this forth.
Apple isn’t even close to Microsoft, (Recall AI, Blizzard acquisition, CloudStrike Kernel presence, Surface Computers, or the wasted Billions-financing OpenAI) in 12 to 18 months. (I count five possible class action suits for Microsoft alone).
Take a look at this link, the ultra M3 Mac Studio debuted at number 12 on the blender benchmark test 40 positions higher than the ultra M2 Mac Studio released one generation ago. Nvidia feelings will be hurt soon enough, and because they are a tech company they can see that convergence is probably only one generation away even the geeks on the tech sites are riled up because they can also see Apple’s trajectory. (Which is probably within a year).
What does that mean? It means that Apple’s hardware/software future is very bright. (The ultra M5 or M6 will be at the top of the chart within one or two generations?). Iteration takes time it’s only been 9 to 10 months since Apple announced anything for Apple Intelligence.
What this chart can’t show is the fact that the energy efficiency of the Apple Silicon chips are second to none at this time, most of the chips (Nvidia) featured on this list require 1000 watts or more, the Apple Silicon chips require less than 140 watts for everything CPU/SOC and GPU…. Users/Investors should look ahead. Apple is executing behind the scenes probably too much for the EU however, who thinks Apple should share everything with their competition for the sake of fairness.
Seems a little disingenuous to produce an iPhone 16 ad highlighting a feature that does not ship with the device, isn’t even available in beta (and won’t be until next year), and in fact hasn’t even been demoed live for anybody…
It was so very obvious and there was no need for it. iPhone 16 is great without.
The irony is that the double standard that causes Apple to be the sole target of the lawsuit is the same double standard that caused them to make the early ads in the first place.
Popular media has been obsessed with artificial intelligence over the last couple of years, with a lot of companies pushing half-baked AI models built on stolen IP, and lots of reporting and internet chatter about AI but containing very little understanding of what AI is or does. At the same time, Apple was first staying low-key about machine learning, until they got uncharacteristically spooked by the degree of hype out there, re-branded it as Apple Intelligence and made some announcements of what is coming in the pipeline.
The double standard is found on the one hand with the public's acceptance and low expectations with regard to other companies unleashing truly over-hyped, unfinished AI garbage on the public, and on the other hand suing Apple for not delivering ahead of schedule their own version, which comes with an expectation of much higher quality and useful relevance.
Are the delays in question the result of Apple fumbling the development process, or simply from getting out over their skis with an earlier-in-the-process than usual announcement about what they're developing? The iPhone was famously announced in a presentation held together with duct tape and spit, and demonstrations teetering on the edge of catastrophic failure. Only time will tell if this is really all that different from that.