Apple has agreed to pay $250 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of misleading iPhone buyers about new artificial intelligence features, including claims tied to the Iphone 16 Pro line and an enhanced Siri. The deal, filed Tuesday in federal court in California, would give some U.S. customers between $25 and $95.
The settlement ends a large consolidated class action filed last year and lets Apple avoid a trial without admitting any wrongdoing. It covers people in the United States who bought an iPhone 15 or iPhone 16 between June 2024 and March 2025, a period when the company was promoting its Apple Intelligence rollout.
The amount at stake is not large for Apple, but the case matters because it strikes at how the company sold the next generation of its phones. Lawyers for buyers said in a revised complaint filed last week that Apple’s marketing around the new AI features amounted to false advertising. They wrote that Apple promoted AI capabilities that did not exist at the time, do not exist now and will not exist for two or more years, if ever, while presenting them as a breakthrough.
An Apple spokeswoman said the lawsuit was focused on the availability of two additional features within a broader set of Apple Intelligence releases. Apple said it resolved the matter to stay focused on delivering products and services to users. The company did not admit wrongdoing in the agreement.
The dispute centers on Apple Intelligence, the company’s AI rollout, and claims that the iPhone 16 was delivered to consumers without it. Lawyers also said Enhanced Siri never arrived. That gap between what Apple promoted and what buyers got is what pushed the case into a consolidated class action and, now, into a settlement.
For affected customers, the money will not be life-changing. For Apple, the bigger issue is the message: the company’s most important hardware launch now carries a court-filed finding that the sales pitch was strong enough to draw a class action and costly enough to settle. The next step is the claims process, which will determine how many buyers get paid and how much each one receives.
