Connect with us

Published

on

Apple iPhone 16s lined up

An advertising watchdog said Tuesday that Apple went too far with marketing that touted the availability of Apple Intelligence features that weren’t released when the ads were broadcast.

The National Advertising Division, a non-profit focused on “truth in advertising,” said that following an inquiry from the organization about Siri improvements, Apple told it that it would permanently discontinue a TV ad called “More Personal Siri” that focused on a big AI improvement to Siri

That ad premiered in September and promoted the iPhone 16 with unreleased features. In March, Apple said it would delay the release of those features to “the coming year.”

“NAD recommended that Apple avoid conveying the message that features are available when they are not,” the group said.

Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment. The company told NAD it disagreed with the findings but would follow the group’s recommendations, the non-profit said. 

NAD’s decision is the latest blow to Apple’s reputation with artificial intelligence technology and its struggles to market the iPhone 16’s AI features.

Apple is also facing class-action lawsuits over those Apple Intelligence ads, and the company in January turned off its AI summary feature for news apps after users and the BBC discovered that the feature at times twisted headlines to display false information.

Besides pulling the ad, which featured “The Last of Us” actor Bella Ramsey, off of YouTube in March, Apple has made other changes to its marketing. 

Apple’s website no longer says Apple Intelligence is “available now” — the tagline now reads “AI for the rest of us.” Apple has also begun running a new ad focused on another Apple Intelligence feature called “Clean Up” that can edit objects or people out of photo’s backgrounds.

The company in June unveiled Apple Intelligence, its marketing term for its suite of AI features. Apple’s newest iPhones, the company said at the time, would be able to access image generators, custom emojis, intelligently-summarized notifications, and eventually, a vastly improved Siri.

When the iPhone 16 was released in September, Apple Intelligence was featured on television ads, billboards and the company’s website as a key reason to buy the iPhone 16. But the AI features rolled out in waves over the course of months as software updates, even while Apple touted the features.

Apple did not make ‘adequate’ disclosures

NAD’s decision is focused on Apple promoting features that weren’t available to the public at the time of the ads.

“Apple did not adequately disclose that the features were not available and reasonable consumers could take away the message that these features were available at the time these claims were first made, which they were not,” the decision said.

The NAD is part of BBB National Programs, a non-profit that offers programs to various industries so they can regulate themselves. Companies that participate in the voluntary program agree to submit to and participate in the NAD’s evaluation process. 

At the end of a decision, NAD usually decides whether specific advertising claims were supported by facts. If they are unsupported, NAD pushes for changes. The Apple case was brought by the NAD itself, said Phyllis Marcus, NAD vice president.

“Apple participated and agreed to take our decisions and recommendations into account,” said Phyllis Marcus, the VP of National Advertising Division.

The majority of NAD cases are brought by one company complaining about a rival’s ads, but NAD is starting to look at claims around AI tools, Marcus said. The Apple decision signals an increased emphasis by regulators and other oversight organizations to scrutinize AI claims.

In its report, NAD found that some key Apple Intelligence features — such as image generation and ChatGPT integration — weren’t available at launch despite being advertised as “available now.”

The company’s claims around Apple Intelligence are now accurate, NAD said. It added that Apple had made changes to its marketing materials about the Siri feature that “adequately” communicated the status of the delayed feature.

Most Apple Intelligence features announced last June have launched and are turned on by default on new iPhones in the U.S.

Investors are looking for signs that Apple Intelligence could boost Apple stock by driving more iPhone upgrades than usual.

About 80% of U.S. users with supported iPhone have tried the features, and more than 50% of current iPhone owners who are looking to upgrade say it will be very important to have Apple Intelligence on their next device, according to results from a Morgan Stanley survey published Tuesday.

Over half of respondents said they would pay $10 or more per month for the feature, the note said, suggesting that consumers see value in the software.

WATCH: Apple has done so much to create new jobs here, just not manufacturing jobs, says Jim Cramer

Apple has done so much to create new jobs here, just not manufacturing jobs, says Jim Cramer

Continue Reading

Technology

Tech founders call on Sequoia Capital to denounce VC Shaun Maguire’s Mamdani comments

Published

on

By

Tech founders call on Sequoia Capital to denounce VC Shaun Maguire's Mamdani comments

Almost 600 people have signed an open letter to leaders at venture firm Sequoia Capital after one of its partners, Shaun Maguire, posted what the group described as a “deliberate, inflammatory attack” against the Muslim Democratic mayoral candidate in New York City.

Maguire, a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, posted on X over the weekend that Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary last month, “comes from a culture that lies about everything” and is out to advance “his Islamist agenda.”

The post had 5.3 million views as of Monday afternoon. Maguire, whose investments include Elon Musk’s SpaceX and X as well as artificial intelligence startup Safe Superintelligence, also published a video on X explaining the remark.

Those signing the letter are asking Sequoia to condemn Maguire’s comments and apologize to Mamdani and Muslim founders. They also want the firm to authorize an independent investigation of Maguire’s behavior in the past two years and post “a zero-tolerance policy on hate speech and religious bigotry.”

They are asking the firm for a public response by July 14, or “we will proceed with broader public disclosure, media outreach and mobilizing our networks to ensure accountability,” the letter says.

Sequoia declined to comment. Maguire didn’t respond to a request for comment, but wrote in a post about the letter on Wednesday that, “You can try everything you want to silence me, but it will just embolden me.”

Among the signees are Mudassir Sheikha, CEO of ride-hailing service Careem, and Amr Awadallah, CEO of AI startup Vectara. Also on the list is Abubakar Abid, who works in machine learning Hugging Face, which is backed by Sequoia, and Ahmed Sabbah, CEO of Telda, a financial technology startup that Sequoia first invested in four years ago.

At least three founders of startups that have gone through startup accelerator program Y Combinator added their names to the letter.

Sequoia as a firm is no stranger to politics. Doug Leone, who led the firm until 2022 and remains a partner, is a longtime Republican donor, who supported Trump in the 2024 election. Following Trump’s victory in November, Leone posted on X, “To all Trump voters:  you no longer have to hide in the shadows…..you’re the majority!!”

By contrast, Leone’s predecessor, Mike Moritz, is a Democratic megadonor, who criticized Trump and, in August, slammed his colleagues in the tech industry for lining up behind the Republican nominee. In a Financial Times opinion piece, Moritz wrote Trump’s tech supporters were “making a big mistake.”

“I doubt whether any of them would want him as part of an investment syndicate that they organised,” wrote Moritz, who stepped down from Sequoia in 2023, over a decade after giving up a management role at the firm. “Why then do they dismiss his recent criminal conviction as nothing more than a politically inspired witch-hunt over a simple book-keeping error?”

Neither Leone nor Moritz returned messages seeking comment.

Roelof Botha, Sequoia’s current lead partner, has taken a more neutral stance. Botha said at an event last July that Sequoia as a partnership doesn’t “take a political point of view,” adding that he’s “not a registered member of either party.” Boelof said he’s “proud of the fact that we’ve enabled many of our partners to express their respected individual views along the way, and given them that freedom.”

Maguire has long been open with his political views. He said on X last year that he had “just donated $300k to President Trump.”

Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, has gained the ire of many people in tech and in the business community more broadly since defeating former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the June primary.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

WATCH: SpaceX valuation is maybe even conservative, says Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire

Continue Reading

Technology

Samsung expects second-quarter profits to more than halve as it struggles to capture AI demand

Published

on

By

Samsung expects second-quarter profits to more than halve as it struggles to capture AI demand

Samsung signage during the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California, US, on Thursday, March 20, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics on Tuesday forecast a 56% fall in profits for the second as the company struggles to capture demand from artificial intelligence chip leader Nvidia. 

The memory chip and smartphone maker said in its guidance that operating profit for the quarter ending June was projected to be around 4.6 trillion won, down from 10.44 trillion Korean won year over year.

The figure is a deeper plunge compared to smart estimates from LSEG, which are weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate.

According to the smart estimates, Samsung was expected to post an operating profit of 6.26 trillion won ($4.57 billion) for the quarter. Meanwhile, Samsung projected its revenue to hit 74 trillion won, falling short of LSEG smart estimates of 75.55 trillion won.

Samsung is a leading player in the global smartphone market and is also one of the world’s largest makers of memory chips, which are utilized in devices such as laptops and servers.

However, the company has been falling behind competitors like SK Hynix and Micron in high-bandwidth memory chips — an advanced type of memory that is being deployed in AI chips.

“The disappointing earnings are due to ongoing operating losses in the foundry business, while the upside in high-margin HBM business remains muted this quarter,” MS Hwang, Research Director at Counterpoint Research, said about the earnings guidance.

SK Hynix, the leader in HBM, has secured a position as Nvidia’s key supplier. While Samsung has reportedly been working to get the latest version of its HBM chips certified by Nvidia, a report from a local outlet suggests these plans have been pushed back to at least September.

The company did not respond to a request for comment on the status of its deals with Nvidia.

Ray Wang, Research Director of Semiconductors, Supply Chain and Emerging Technology at Futurum Group told CNBC that it is clear that Samsung has yet to pass Nvidia’s qualification for its most advanced HBM.

“Given that Nvidia accounts for roughly 70% of global HBM demand, the delay meaningfully caps near-term upside,” Wang said. He noted that while Samsung has secured some HBM supply for AI processors from AMD, this win is unlikely to contribute to second-quarter results due to the timing of production ramps.

Meanwhile, Samsung’s chip foundry business continues to face weak orders and serious competition from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Wang added.

Reuters reported in September that Samsung had instructed its subsidiaries worldwide to cut 30% of staff in some divisions, citing sources familiar with the matter.

Continue Reading

Technology

Waymo to begin testing in Philadelphia with safety drivers behind the wheel

Published

on

By

Waymo to begin testing in Philadelphia with safety drivers behind the wheel

A Waymo autonomous self-driving Jaguar electric vehicle sits parked at an EVgo charging station in Los Angeles, California, on May 15, 2024.

Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images

Waymo said it will begin testing in Philadelphia, with a limited fleet of vehicles and human safety drivers behind the wheel.

“This city is a National Treasure,” Waymo wrote in a post on X on Monday. “It’s a city of love, where eagles fly with a gritty spirit and cheese that spreads and cheese that steaks. Our road trip continues to Philly next.”

The Alphabet-owned company confirmed to CNBC that it will be testing in Pennsylvania’s largest city through the fall, adding that the initial fleet of cars will be manually driven through the more complex parts of Philadelphia, including downtown and on freeways.

“Folks will see our vehicles driving at all hours throughout various neighborhoods, from North Central to Eastwick, and from University City to as far east as the Delaware River,” a Waymo spokesperson said.

With its so-called road trips, Waymo seeks to collect mapping data and evaluate how its autonomous technology, Waymo Driver, performs in new environments, handling traffic patterns and local infrastructure. Road trips are often used a way for the company to gauge whether it can potentially offer a paid ride share service in a particular location.

The expanded testing, which will go through the fall, comes as Waymo aims for a broader rollout. Last month, the company announced plans to drive vehicles manually in New York for testing, marking the first step toward potentially cracking the largest U.S. city. Waymo applied for a permit with the New York City Department of Transportation to operate autonomously with a trained specialist behind the wheel in Manhattan. State law currently doesn’t allow for such driverless operations.

Waymo One provides more than 250,000 paid trips each week across Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, Texas, and is preparing to bring fully autonomous rides to Atlanta, Miami, and Washington, D.C., in 2026.

Alphabet has been under pressure to monetize artificial intelligence products as it bolsters spending on infrastructure. Alphabet’s “Other Bets” segment, which includes Waymo, brought in revenue of $1.65 billion in 2024, up from $1.53 billion in 2023. However, the segment lost $4.44 billion last year, compared to a loss of $4.09 billion the previous year.

WATCH: We went to Texas for Tesla’s robotaxi launch

We went to Texas for Tesla's robotaxi launch. Here's what we saw

Continue Reading

Trending