One of Apple’s big selling points for the iPhone 16 was that it would be the first to get Apple Intelligence, the company’s suite of AI features for doing things like summarizing texts and generating custom emoji. But some of the bigger promises, like a revamped Siri, have yet to come to fruition. As a result, Apple has removed the description “available now” from the landing page for Apple Intelligence on the company’s website following a recommendation from a truth-in-advertising organization.
The National Advertising Division, which is part of the Better Business Bureau, led an inquiry into Apple’s advertising promises around Apple Intelligence. It found that while some of the features marketed by the company have been made available to some users, the blanket statement that all of the Apple Intelligence offerings are “available now” was not accurate
Basically, the issue in NAD’s mind is that Apple’s marketing misled people as to what features were actually available. While the iPhone 16 lineup launched with functionality like Priority Notifications, Image Playground, and ChatGPT integration, the Apple Intelligence page included other features that were not immediately available. Apple did offer little disclosures about that—footnotes and small print that suggested those features would be coming in future updates—but NAD said those distinctions were “neither sufficiently clear and conspicuous nor close to the triggering claims.”
Ultimately, the NAD recommended that Apple either ditch or change the claim that all features are “Available Now,” and Apple followed that recommendation. An archived version of the company’s landing page for Apple Intelligence shows the “Available Now” text, which has since been pulled down and no longer appears on the site. In a statement, a spokesperson for Apple said, “While we disagree with the NAD’s findings related to features that are available to users now, we appreciate the opportunity to work with them and will follow their recommendations.”
It’s notable that Apple decided to kill the “Available Now” framing rather than pull down the promised features that are not yet available, presumably reasoning that those features are enough to get people to buy and wait. But thus far, Apple Intelligence has been more of a hassle than a functional sales hook. The features that are available haven’t been able to excite or convert customers. In fact, features like AI summaries of texts and news stories have been so bad that many have turned them off. Meanwhile, the big promise of an AI-infused Siri has hit snag after snag and appears to be delayed until potentially 2026. That whole situation has gotten so bad that it has led to changes at the executive level as the company scrambles to try to get back on track.
Apple might want to thank NAD for recommending cutting down on the Apple Intelligence advertising. Seems like the company might be better off burying those features rather than putting them front and center.
