Some iPhone owners will be eligible to receive
$25 to $95 over claims that the tech giant oversold its artificial intelligence
system, Apple Intelligence.
·
Apple
agreed to a $250
million settlement over
claims it overstated A.I. capabilities.
·
Lawsuits
alleged “Apple
Intelligence” features were promised but not available at iPhone launch in 2024.
·
Case
covers buyers of iPhone 16 and select iPhone 15 models.
·
Eligible
consumers may receive up
to $95 per device.
·
Complaints
included faulty
notification summaries and a
delayed
Siri upgrade.
·
Apple denied wrongdoing and said it has since added multiple A.I.
features.
·
The
settlement still requires court
approval.
·
Reflects
Apple’s slower pace in A.I. compared to rivals like Google and Microsoft.
·
Apple
later moved to integrate Gemini into its ecosystem.
Apple
agreed on Tuesday (05.05.2026) to pay $250 million to settle legal claims that it
misled consumers about the abilities of its artificial intelligence system, Apple
Intelligence, according to court filings.
The
settlement resolves a handful of class action lawsuits filed against Apple last
year, which claimed the company oversold what its product could do during its rollout
in 2024. Those suits were consolidated last year by the U.S. District Court for
the Northern District of California, where a judge still needs to approve the settlement.
Consumers
who purchased an iPhone 16 and some models of the iPhone 15 between June 2024 and
March 2025 will be eligible to collect up to $95 per device, according to the filings.
As part of the settlement, Apple denied any wrongdoing.
The
settlement underscores Apple’s challenges in a global technology race to dominate
A.I. The iPhone maker has largely sat it out, in part because it hasn’t built its
own A.I. models like Google’s Gemini. Tech companies like Microsoft and Nvidia soared
in value as they bet heavily on the technology.
Since
“the launch of Apple Intelligence, we have introduced dozens of features across
many languages that are integrated across Apple’s platforms,” Marni Goldberg, an
Apple spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We resolved this matter to stay focused
on doing what we do best, delivering the most innovative products and services to
our users.”
Apple
first teased Apple Intelligence in June 2024 as an answer to products like OpenAI’s
ChatGPT. The company promised big improvements to its personal assistant, Siri,
which has been part of its devices for more than a decade.
Apple
also said it planned to introduce A.I. features to summarize notifications and offer
help on improving writing in emails and text messages. In advertisements, the actor
Bella Ramsey used Apple Intelligence to remember someone’s name and to catch up
on an email.
But
those features weren’t available on the iPhones that Apple shipped in September
2024. Instead, the company gradually rolled out the promised features and soon ran
into problems. Notification summaries misrepresented news reports, for example,
and Apple disabled that feature. In March 2025, Apple delayed the release of an
upgraded Siri over quality problems.
Apple
misrepresented the “capabilities of the series 16 iPhone and deceived millions of
consumers into spending hundreds of dollars on a phone they did not need, based
on features that do not exist,” according to one of the class action lawsuits.
In
December, Apple announced the retirement of its head of A.I., John Giannandrea.
In January, the company said it would use Google’s Gemini to power its A.I. products,
including Siri.