Is Siri getting stupider?

A class-action lawsuit accusing Apple of misrepresenting the capabilities of Siri, the company’s voice-powered personal assistant for the iPhone, is further tarnishing the company’s once-sterling reputation. Over the past couple of years, Apple has faced criticism for dropped calls and design problems with the iPhone, reports of iPad overheating, the emergence of Mac-oriented malware, and calls for boycotts over the working conditions at the company’s third-party assembly plants.

The latest controversy revolves around Siri, which received positive reviews when it was released as a core element on the iPhone 4S late last year. Using both voice recognition and artificial intelligence technologies, Siri is designed to respond to voice inquiries such as “what’s the weather today” or “find me a well-rated Greek restaurant in Hoboken” and pull together the needed information to deliver the result to the user.

The problem, according to a class-action lawsuit filed by New York resident Frank Fazio: The iPhone 4S’s Siri feature does not perform as advertised. Fazio purchased the iPhone 4S solely for the Siri functionality he saw in Apple commercials, which showed users getting impressive assistance with such tasks as making appointments, finding restaurants, learning to play guitar, and tying ties.

Immediately after purchasing the iPhone 4S, Fazio “realized that Siri was not performing as advertised. For instance, when he asked Siri for directions to a certain place or to locate a store, Siri either did not understand what Fazio was asking or, after a very long wait time, responded with the wrong answer,” according to the lawsuit.

Fazio’s problems with Siri are evidently not isolated. Some observers have said that Siri actually worked beautifully once upon a time — but has steadily worsened in recent months. “I used to ask Siri, ‘What are the five biggest lakes in California?’ and it would come back with the answer,” Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak told The Daily Beast in January. “Now it just misses. It gives me real estate listings.”

What’s more, Wozniak complained that Siri could not reliably connect to the back-end servers that power the system: “With the iPhone 4 I could press a button and call my wife. Now on the 4S I can only do that when Siri can connect over the Internet. But many times it can’t connect. I’ve never had Android come back and say, ‘I can’t connect over the Internet,'” he said.

Cult of Mac, too, has criticized Siri, going so far as to say outright that it’s so “broken,” it did not make it on to the new iPad. “Siri — a beta by Apple’s own admission — is quantifiably dumber, less intelligent, and less useful than it was just five months ago when it first launched,” the blog posted.

Apple’s support forums, too, are brimming with criticism about Siri’s unreliable performance, with complaints that one minute the software works fine but the next it’s incapable of connecting with back-end servers to deliver an answer. Other users have posted complaints about the software not properly recognizing voice requests, trouble with making calls, complaints about changes to the sound of “her” voice, and more.

Peppered among the questions and complaints are user recommendations that wiping the device clean will restore Siri’s functionality — though that likely is not advice that Apple would provide. Additionally, several users have pointed out that Siri is a beta product and that users should thus be patient and expect such issues.

The problem with that argument is that Apple has not been clear in its marketing and advertising materials that Siri is in beta status and won’t consistently perform as described. “Buried in Apple’s website is the amorphous sentence: ‘Siri is currently in beta and we’ll continue to improve it over time,'” according to the lawsuit.

Indeed, the iPhone section of the Apple website hypes Siri’s personal-assistant capabilities, but there’s no mention that it’s a beta product until you move to the Siri page. There, a little orange box reading “Beta” appears at the top — but there’s no specific explanation or warning about the implications of the beta label, such as “Because this product is currently in beta, it will not function reliably or consistently.”

Additionally, if Siri is a beta product, why did Apple choose to build a new smartphone around the software in the first place? A more prudent approach — one that would not generate criticism and lawsuits — would have been to roll it out in phases, thus generating interest while testing the limits of the service.

Did Apple truly believe that, even in beta, Siri was ready for prime time? Or did the company arrogantly think, “Hey, we’re Apple. We can roll out whatever we want and people will keep using us.”

Whether it was arrogance, poor planning, or some combination thereof, Apple should be careful not to squander the admiration and goodwill it’s generated over the years. Although Apple still has its fair share of avid supporters, company execs should be more than a little worried about the bad mojo the company has accumulated of late.

Apple’s greatest selling points for its products are their reputations for reliability, security, quality design, and ease-of-use — all factors that contribute to the company’s ability to charge a premium for its wares. If the company doesn’t lay out a short-term damage-control plan as well as a long-term strategy to restore its invaluable image , it stands to lose hard-won ground to its array of competitors salivating for a piece of the Apple pie.

This story, “Is Siri getting stupider?,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.