The Beta Is Real. So Is The Check.

Part of the ongoing Big Tech's War on Users series. Two things happened to Siri this week that have nothing to do with each other on paper and everything to do with each other in practice. Siri AI — the "new" Siri that shipped with iOS 27 — is rolling out wider, still labeled beta, still gated behind a waitlist. And this same week, notices started going out for the $250 million settlement over the Apple Intelligence promises made back in June 2024. Apple is now simultaneously shipping the thing it promised two years late, still visibly unfinished, while paying people for having promised it in the first place. Let that sit for a second. What's Actually Wrong With Siri AI Right Now 9to5Mac ran the numbers on what's showing up in user complaints since the wider rollout, and it sorts into five buckets: Network errors with no explanation. Repeated "Sorry, something went wrong" failures, apparently tied to backend connectivity issues — sometimes fixed by toggling a VPN or switching Wi-Fi —…