When Apple unveiled iOS 18 last year, tech fans and investors alike held their breath, and some started throwing their hats in the air. After all, the update was not just some minor design revision, but a new generation of personalized Siri with artificial intelligence elements — Apple Intelligence. Expectations were high, but something went wrong with the results.
The main star WWDC 2024 — Personalized Siri — was supposed to be a breakthrough that could have tipped the innovation scale in Apple’s favor. But instead of impressive features, users got… silence. The company postponed the release of this feature, citing «reliability issues». In response, — dissatisfaction, in particular from Apple shareholder Eric Tucker, who filed a lawsuit against the company in a California court. And not just any lawsuit, but a class action, accusing the company of violating the US federal securities law.
The plaintiff claims that Apple «embellished reality» when it demonstrated AI-enabled Siri at WWDC 2024. The company did not have a working prototype, but gave the impression that the feature was about to be ready. This allegedly misled investors. And then the release was postponed, causing the company’s shares to plummet by almost 13%.
According to the lawsuit, at the time of the presentation, the company had neither a finished product nor any real reason to promise that the feature would be released as part of the iPhone 16. The icing on the cake is the mention that the Siri demonstration on stage was not a live show, but a video concept. Although, it is worth noting that Apple responded to this by saying that the demonstration was «real», the feature just needs to be finalized.
It is worth noting that Apple promised to release personalized Siri with iOS 18.4, but first postponed the date to 18.5and then — the following year. While competitors (Google with Veo and Gemini, OpenAI with ChatGPT, and Samsung with Galaxy AI) have already entered the arena with real capabilities, the Cupertino team is still tweaking the functionality that seems to be ready.
The irony is that this is not the first delay of this Siri, but the first one with such legal consequences from its own shareholder, who seems to be tired of waiting for a miracle. Previously a similar lawsuit was filed by users, who could not wait for Apple Intelligence to work as advertised. And while Apple is fixing its «smart assistant», OpenAI and Google are already dictating trends. Although at first, Google was also in the catch-up role.
Source: wccftech
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