Cupertino uses fictional brands to probe real AI and data risks

Cupertino follows a tiny law firm set up to sue the giants of Silicon Valley. The firm is called Price Siffre, a name that sounds like “cipher,” and it is built from people a fictional tech company called S-Talk pushed out.

Mike Colter (Luke Cage, Evil) plays Michael Price, an in-house lawyer who says he was fired on false grounds so the company could keep his stock. His own attorney tells him to drop it, because no firm in the Valley wants to make enemies of the companies that hand out startup equity. So he decides to fight anyway.

Rachel Keller (Legion) plays Olivia Siffre, who lost her S-Talk job after turning down a founder’s advances. She later discovers the company used her recorded voice and personal history to create Daisy, a flirty AI model it is selling to the public. The two join forces, with Ella Stiller as Christy Palladino, a former assistant who becomes the firm’s investigator.

The show’s cases are fiction, but you will recognize most of them. Reviewers have spotted thinly disguised takes on the Zizians (a fringe group that grew out of the rationalist community), the betting site Polymarket, Jeff Bezos’s reported interest in looksmaxxing (the online trend of obsessing over facial looks), and the row over OpenAI and a voice that sounded like Scarlett Johansson. The Daisy plot is the clearest echo of that last one.

The wider world of the show is packed with people real tech news keeps returning to. There are data brokers who buy and sell personal details, underpaid workers who train AI systems, petty billionaires, and the contractors who build their offices and doomsday bunkers. The firm’s targets are a fictional “big seven,” a nod to the handful of huge tech stocks that dominate the market.

Over the season, a storyline about artificial general intelligence (an AI that can learn and reason at least as well as a person) gives the show a running thread beyond the case of the week.

Robert and Michelle King have form here. Their earlier CBS hit The Good Wife was praised in 2013 for handling Bitcoin, viral videos and government spying without sounding silly. Since then they have made The Good Fight, Evil and Elsbeth.

At a press event for the show, Robert King said the couple wanted to tell a David and Goliath story about the people being hurt by tech, not the people at the top. That includes workers fired too early and those replaced by the technology itself. He also said the news has supplied an almost endless run of cases, so the writers have not had to hunt for stories.

The cast grows as the season goes on. Busy Philipps plays Natalia Boutella, the ex-wife of a tech boss who starts as a client and becomes a partner. Nik Dodani joins as the firm’s tech expert, Renée Elise Goldsberry plays a rival lawyer from Michael’s past, and a rotating bench of odd judges includes Peter Riegert and Jackie Hoffman.

The praise is not unconditional. One critic advised viewers to skip or forgive the pilot, which takes a while to find its tone, and said a few character details feel too cute. The same review noted that the show treats AI with real fear but little moral judgment, and it often gives chatbots human traits, which may annoy viewers who find that misleading.

Fans of the Kings may also find the first few episodes familiar. The trio of leads echoes Evil, the investigator recalls a favorite from The Good Wife, and David Buckley’s playful score sounds like his earlier work for them. Critics say those echoes fade once the world and cast expand.

Overall, though, the response has been warm. One critic who watched all 10 episodes sent out for review called it the best drama on broadcast TV and one of the best shows anywhere.

Cupertino will not tell you how to protect your data, but it does a good job of showing why the issues matter. Many of its cases come down to things that could touch any of us: a company using someone’s voice without consent, personal data sold on without our knowledge, or a worker with no realistic way to challenge a giant employer.

It also lands at a busy moment for tech backlash on screen. Films such as The Social Reckoning are in theaters, and Netflix has an FTX drama, The Altruists, due in November. The difference is reach. A weekly CBS show can carry these ideas to viewers who have never followed an AI lawsuit, and the Kings have said they chose broadcast partly because network shows get marketed and do not vanish the way many streaming series do.

If you want a feel for the arguments about AI and privacy without reading court filings, it is an easy way in. Just remember it is a drama: the companies are invented, and real cases move far more slowly.