Apple AI ads did not make ‘adequate’ disclosures, watchdog says
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
Shares of advertising technology company AppLovin and stock trading app Robinhood Markets each jumped about 7% in extended trading on Friday after S&P Global said the two will join the S&P 500 index.
The changes will go into effect before the beginning of trading on Sept. 22, S&P Global announced in a statement. AppLovin will replace MarketAxess Holdings, while Robinhood will take the place of Caesars Entertainment.
In March, short-seller Fuzzy Panda Research advised the committee for the large-cap U.S. index to keep AppLovin from becoming a constituent. AppLovin shares dropped 15% in December, when the committee picked Workday to join the S&P 500. Robinhood, for its part, saw shares slip 2% in June when it was excluded from a quarterly rebalancing of the index.
The S&P 500 already has a heavy concentration of large technology companies. Datadog and DoorDash entered earlier this year.
It’s normal for stocks to go up on news of their inclusion in a major index such as the S&P 500. Fund managers need to buy shares to reflect the updates.
AppLovin and Robinhood both went public on Nasdaq in 2021.
Robinhood has been a favorite among retail investors who have bid up shares of meme stocks such as AMC Entertainment and GameStop.
AppLovin itself became a stock to watch, with shares gaining 278% in 2023 and over 700% in 2024. As of Friday’s close, the stock had gained only 51% so far in 2025. AppLovin’s software brings targeted ads to mobile apps and games.
Earlier this year, AppLovin offered to buy the U.S. TikTok business from China’s ByteDance. U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly extended the deadline for a sale, most recently in June.
At Robinhood’s annual general meeting in June, a shareholder asked Vlad Tenev, the company’s co-founder and CEO, if there were plans for getting into the S&P 500.
“It’s a difficult thing to plan for,” Tenev said. “I think it’s one of those things that hopefully happens.”
He said he believed the company was eligible.
Shares of MarketAxess, which specializes in fixed-income trading, have fallen 17% year to date, while shares of Caesars, which runs hotels and casinos, are down 21%.
AppLovin and Robinhood ytd stock chart.
U.S. Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter raised questions on Friday about the status of an artificial intelligence chatbot complaint against Snap that the agency referred to the Department of Justice earlier this year.
In January, the FTC announced that it would refer a non-public complaint regarding allegations that Snap’s My AI chatbot posed potential “risks and harms” to young users and said it would refer the suit to the DOJ “in the public interest.”
“We don’t know what has happened to that complaint,” Slaughter said on CNBC’s ‘The Exchange.” “The public does not know what has happened to that complaint, and that’s the kind of thing that I think people deserve answers on.”
Snap’s My AI chatbot, which debuted in 2023, is powered by large language models from OpenAI and Google and has drawn scrutiny for problematic responses.
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Snap declined to comment.
Slaugther’s comments came a day after President Donald Trump held a White House dinner with several tech executives, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Apple CEO Tim Cook.
“The president is hosting Big Tech CEOs in the White House even as we’re reading about truly horrifying reports of chatbots engaging with small children,” she said.
Trump has been attempting to remove Slaughter from her FTC position, but earlier this week, U.S. appeals court allowed her to maintain her role.
On Thursday, the president asked the Supreme Court to allow him to fire her from the post.
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, who was selected by Trump to lead the commission, publicly opposed the complaint against Snap in January, prior to succeeding Lina Khan at the helm.
At the time, he said he would “release a more detailed statement about this affront to the Constitution and the rule of law” if the DOJ were to eventually file a complaint.
WATCH: FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter on President Trump’s latest attempt to fire her.
Technology
Google leads monster week for tech, pushing megacaps to combined $21 trillion in market cap
Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai meets with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk at Google for Startups in Warsaw, Poland, on February 13, 2025.
Klaudia Radecka | Nurphoto | Getty Images
From the courtroom to the boardroom, it was a big week for tech investors.
The resolution of Google’s antitrust case led to sharp rallies for Alphabet and Apple. Broadcom shareholders cheered a new $10 billion customer. And Tesla’s stock was buoyed by a freshly proposed pay package for CEO Elon Musk.
Add it up, and the U.S. tech industry’s eight trillion-dollar companies gained a combined $420 billion in market cap this week, lifting their total value to $21 trillion, despite a slide in Nvidia shares.
Those companies now account for roughly 36% of the S&P 500, a proportion so great by historical standards that Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices, told CNBC by email, “there are no comparisons.”
There was a certain irony to this week’s gains.
Alphabet’s 9% jump on Wednesday was directly tied to the U.S. government effort to diminish the search giant’s market control, which was part of a years-long campaign to break up Big Tech. Since 2020, Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta have all been hit with antitrust allegations by the Department of Justice or Federal Trade Commission.
A year ago, Google lost to the DOJ, a result viewed by many as the most-significant antitrust decision for the tech industry since the case against Microsoft more than two decades earlier. But in the remedies ruling this week, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said Google won’t be forced to sell its Chrome browser despite its loss in court and instead handed down a more limited punishment, including a requirement to share search data with competitors.
The decision lifted Apple along with Alphabet, because the companies can stick with an arrangement that involves Google paying Apple billions of dollars per year to be the default search engine on iPhones. Alphabet rose more than 10% for the week and Apple added 3.2%, helping boost the Nasdaq 1.1%.
Analysts at Wedbush Securities wrote in a note after the decision that the ruling “removed a huge overhang” on Google’s stock and a “black cloud worry” that hung over Apple. Further, they said it clears the path for the companies to pursue a bigger artificial intelligence deal involving Gemini, Google’s AI models.
“This now lays the groundwork for Apple to continue its deal and ultimately likely double down on more AI related partnerships with Google Gemini down the road,” the analysts wrote.
Mehta explained that a major factor in his decision was the emergence of generative AI, which has become a much more competitive market than traditional search and has dramatically changed the market dynamics.
New players like OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity have altered Google’s dominance, Mehta said, noting that generative AI technologies “may yet prove to be game changers.”
On Friday, Alphabet investors shrugged off a separate antitrust matter out of Europe. The company was hit with a 2.95-billion-euro ($3.45 billion) fine from European Union regulators for anti-competitive practices in its advertising technology business.
Broadcom pops
While OpenAI was an indirect catalyst for Google and Apple this week, it was more directly tied to the huge rally in Broadcom’s stock.
Following Broadcom’s better-than-expected earnings report on Thursday, CEO Hock Tan told analysts that his chipmaker had secured a $10 billion contract with a new customer, which would be the company’s fourth large AI client.
Several analysts said the new customer is OpenAI, and the Financial Times reported on a partnership between the two companies.
Broadcom is the newest entrant into the trillion-dollar club, thanks to the company’s custom chips for AI, already used by Google, Meta and TikTok parent ByteDance. With Its 13% jump this week, the stock is now up 120% in the past year, lifting Broadcom’s market cap to around $1.6 trillion.
“The company is firing on all cylinders with clear line of sight for growth supported by significant backlog,” analysts at Barclays wrote in a note, maintaining their buy recommendation and lifting their price target on the stock.
For the other giant AI chipmaker, the past week wasn’t so good.
Nvidia shares fell more than 4% in the holiday-shortened week, the worst performance among the megacaps. There was no apparent negative news for Nvidia, but the stock has now dropped for four consecutive weeks.
Still, Nvidia remains the largest company by market cap, valued at over $4 trillion, with its stock up 56% in the past 12 months.
Microsoft also fell this week and is on an extended slide, dropping for five straight weeks. Shares are still up 21% over the last 12 months.
On the flipside, Tesla has been the laggard in the group. Shares of the electric vehicle maker are down 13% this year due to a multi-quarter sales slump that reflects rising competition from lower-cost Chinese manufacturers and an aging lineup of EVs.
But Tesla shares climbed 5% this week, sparked mostly by gains on Friday after the company said it wants investors to approve a pay plan for Musk that could be worth up to almost $1 trillion.
The payouts, split into 12 tranches, would require Tesla to see significant value appreciation, starting with the first award that won’t kick in until the company almost doubles its market cap to $2 trillion.
Tesla Chairwoman Robyn Denholm told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin the plan was designed to keep Musk, the world’s richest person, “motivated and focused on delivering for the company.”
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