Apple has agreed to pay out US$250 million (about C$340 million) to iPhone customers as part of a settlement in a Siri AI false advertising lawsuit.
The suit, filed in the San Francisco federal court for the Northern District of California, alleged that Apple marketed “Apple Intelligence” AI features as a selling point in 2024 for the iPhone 16 lineup and iPhone 15 Pro but failed to deliver on them. In particular, these phones were labelled as “built for Apple Intelligence” but lacked many of the touted AI features at launch. Apple even pulled an ad for Apple Intelligence featuring The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey.
This naturally led to blowback, with the U.S.’ National Advertising Division (NAD) calling on Apple to “discontinue or modify” the “available now” claim for Apple Intelligence features. Apple has since slowly rolled out features like Genmoji AI-generated emoji and ChatGPT integration into Siri, while its Google Gemini-powered next-gen version of the virtual assistant is slated to roll out later this year.
Given all of this, the legal team at Clarkson Law Firm filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of consumers. As part of the new settlement, U.S. consumers will be able to receive up to US$95 (about C$130).
While this settlement only applies to Americans, it should be noted that a similar class-action was proposed last year in B.C. In it, Apple was accused of running a “pervasive marketing campaign” for the iPhone 16, promoting features that “did not exist then and do not exist now.” The status of this particular legal action remains unclear, but perhaps the new U.S. settlement will help with it.
Source: Clarkson Law Firm Via: The Verge
