They promised Apple Intelligence with iPhone 15 Pro and more recent models.
Now [relevant parts of] Siri AI is restricted to iPhone 17 / iPhone Air and more recent models.
People who believed Apple and bought an iPhone 16 to use with Apple Intelligence are getting the shaft.
What Apple said was that on-device models would be from the iPhone Air/17 Pro models and newer. That doesn't mean that the iPhone 15 Pro to 16 wouldn't get Apple Intelligence via Private Cloud Compute, though that probably means they won't have on-device models. I don't remember the marketing for those phones promising on-device models, just Apple Intelligence capabilities in general.
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I'll probably get downvoted, but my guess is that they realized they need a cutting-edge local model that would only work decently on the most powerful iPhones. And I see why Apple would choose to give no AI at all rather than use a weaker model that will hinder user experience.