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Apple faces false advertising lawsuit over AI promises
Apple faces a federal class-action lawsuit alleging false advertising of AI features that haven’t yet materialized. Filed on Wednesday in the federal district court in San Jose, California, the suit claims Apple misled consumers by heavily promoting Apple Intelligence capabilities in iPhone marketing that weren’t yet fully functional, including an AI-enhanced Siri assistant. Bloomberg reported that when Apple began promoting its Apple Intelligence suite in the fall of 2024, the technology was merely a “barely working prototype.”
The legal challenge came the day before a significant executive shakeup at Apple. On Thursday, the company removed its digital assistant Siri from AI chief John Giannandrea’s purview and reassigned it to Mike Rockwell, creator of the Vision Pro mixed-reality headset. The restructuring also follows Apple’s announcement earlier this month that planned updates to Siri are delayed until 2026 due to development difficulties.
Meanwhile, Apple continues developing new future AI features, including an ongoing project aimed at equipping Apple Watches with cameras that could provide visual intelligence features to analyze users’ surroundings. Ultimately, the company is betting on Rockwell’s technical expertise and its own hardware footprint to turn around its struggling AI efforts and catch up with competitors.
Big Tech under Trump 2.0
The tech landscape has shifted dramatically since Donald Trump’s first term in office: AI is booming, Meta and Google are fighting antitrust battles, and Elon Musk turned Twitter into “X.” In anticipation of Trump 2.0, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have announced they’ll prioritize free speech over content moderation and fact-checking. So what’s in store for the tech industry in 2025? On GZERO World, Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson joins Ian Bremmer on GZERO World to discuss recent shifts at Big Tech companies and the intersection of technology, media, and politics. What does the tech industry stand to gain–or lose–from another Trump presidency? Will Elon Musk have a positive impact on the future of US tech policy? And how will things like the proliferation of bots and the fragmentation of social media affect political discourse online?
“Social media platforms, in general, are shifting to the right, and they are less important than they were five years ago. They’re bifurcated, dispersed, conversations happen across platforms,” Thompson explains, “As communities split, there will be less and less one town square where people discuss issues of consequence.”
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
Big Tech and Trump 2.0: Nicholas Thompson on AI, Media, and Policy
Listen: What will the future of tech policy look like in a second Trump administration? And how will changes in the tech world—everything from the proliferation of AI and bots to the fragmentation of social media—impact how people talk, interact, and find information online? On the GZERO World Podcast, Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, joins Ian Bremmer to discuss the intersection of technology, media, and politics as Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House. Trump had a contentious relationship with the tech industry in his first term, but this time around, tech leaders are optimistic Trump 2.0 will be good for business, buoyed by hopes of loosening AI regulations, a crypto boom, and a more business-friendly administration. What does Big Tech stand to gain–or lose–from a second Trump presidency? Will Elon Musk help usher US tech policy into a new era, or will he create more chaos in the White House? And how concerned should we be about the dangers of AI-generated content online? Thompson and Bremmer break down the big changes in Big Tech and where the industry goes from here.
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What does Big Tech want from Trump?
What does Big Tech want from Donald Trump? Trump had a contentious relationship with the industry in his first administration. But in 2025, Silicon Valley is recalibrating. On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer looks at the parade of tech leaders who have visited with Trump since his election win, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and moves like Meta’s recent announcement it would scrap its fact-checking program, all to get on President-elect Trump’s good side as he prepares to return to office. So what does the industry stand to gain—or lose—from a second Trump term? Loosening AI and crypto regulation and a business-friendly White House are high on the wish list. However, blanket tariffs on China and Trump's grudge against Section 230 could mean that, despite the optimism, Trump 2.0 may not lead to the big windfall Big Tech hopes for.
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
Hard Numbers: Hey big spender, an iPhone boost, Google’s robot coders, Super Micro’s super downfall
200 billion: Capital expenditures from four of the largest US tech companies — Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google — are set to exceed $200 billion this year, inflated by enormous spending on artificial intelligence software and hardware investments. Amazon’s spending alone surged 81% in a year, leading CEO Andy Jassy to assure investors the company’s bets will pay off. These are record sums at a time when Wall Street seems hesitant to keep rewarding excessive spending on AI.
46 billion: Apple reversed its fortunes after a bad year of iPhone sales, selling more than $46 billion of its signature smartphone between July and September — a 6% increase year over year. The company’s new iPhone 16 is part of its push into artificial intelligence — marketed as a phone capable of handling all of its Apple Intelligence features, such as a supercharged Siri, new writing tools, and call transcription — which started rolling out last week. The company hopes that AI can convince customers old and new that it’s time to pay up for a new iPhone, which starts at $799.
25: More than 25% of all new code produced by Google is written by artificial intelligence, according to CEO Sundar Pichai. AI produces the code, which is then reviewed and accepted by human engineers. A recent Stack Overflow survey found that 76% of all software developers are using or are planning to use AI to code.
45: Super Micro Computer, a key supplier of Nvidia servers, saw its stock fall 45% after its auditor, Ernst & Young, resigned because it was “unwilling to be associated with the financial statements prepared by management.” Once one of the hottest AI stocks, the company has now wiped out all of its 2024 gains.European Union antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager holds a press conference after Europe's top court ruling on Apple's fight against an order by EU competition regulators to pay a record 13 billion euros in back taxes to Ireland, in Brussels, Belgium September 10, 2024.
Take two: Brussels’ banner day vs. tech firms
It was Tech Two-fer Tuesday in Brussels, as EU regulators got twin wins in their ongoing regulatory battle with US tech giants.
Google lost its final appeal in a 2017 antitrust case that found the company’s search engine had illegally prioritized its own shopping platforms. Google must now pay $2.7 billion in fines.
Apple, meanwhile, was ordered to pay $14 billion in back taxes, after the EU’s top court ruled that the Irish government had once given the tech giant sweetheart incentives that amounted to “unlawful aid.”
To be fair, these numbers are pocket change for companies raking in hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue. And in both cases, the underlying offenses were rectified years ago – the Irish scrapped the sweetheart deal in 2015 and Google has since tweaked its ad algorithms.
But the rulings set a precedent as the EU flexes its unique muscle as a standard-setter in global tech regulation.
The next showdown: In July, Brussels said X had violated strict EU rules on harmful content. If the two sides can’t settle, the case will go to court. That seems likely, given that X owner Elon Musk responded to the charges by vowing to fight “censorship” and calling on the EU to perform a sex act on its “own face.”
An Apple logo is pictured in an Apple store in Paris, France.
Apple signs Joe Biden’s pledge
Apple signed on to the Biden administration’s voluntary pledge for artificial intelligence companies on July 26.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harrisfirst announced that they secured commitments from seven major AI developers — Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI — a year ago in what the administration says laid the groundwork for its executive order on AI adopted in October. The voluntary commitments included safety testing, information sharing on safety risks (with government, academia, and civil society groups), cybersecurity investments, watermarking systems AI-generated content, and a general agreement to “develop and deploy advanced AI systems to help address society’s greatest challenges.”
Until now, Apple wasn’t on the list. Now, as Apple prepares to release new AI-enabled iPhones (powered by OpenAI’s systems as well as its own), the Cupertino-based tech giant is playing nice with the Biden administration, signaling that they’ll be a responsible actor, even without formal legislation on the books.
The first upgraded Apple store is opening in Shanghai, China, on June 25, 2024.
Why Apple’s having a rotten time in China
Apple isn’t synonymous with artificial intelligence — at least not yet. In the West, Apple has lain in wait while OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, and Meta jump forward with powerful generative AI models. That’s about to change when Apple adds its recently announced Apple Intelligence system to iPhones, but the company is also struggling to make a dent in another global market: China.
Apple is losing market share in the Chinese smartphone market — where it formerly held a dominant position — because it hasn’t yet incorporated artificial intelligence into its phones. Chinese brands, such as Vivo and Honor, which took the top two spots, have AI built into their systems.
One challenge may be that companies need government approval before introducing AI — and Apple is already out of favor in the eyes of Beijing, which has largely banned its devices from government use. “As of March, Beijing’s internet watchdog, the Cyberspace Administration of China, had approved 117 generative AI products, none of which is foreign-developed,” the Wall Street Journal notes.
We’re watching how Apple tries to get the Middle Kingdom to take another bite.