Apple Intelligence beta shows potential for humor - and heartbreak - with personal text summaries

Facepalm: When Apple Intelligence arrives with iOS 18.1 later this month, one of its features will summarize incoming emails, texts, and audio transcriptions to help users sort through them more quickly. Apple likely expects that the functionality will mainly assist with work communications, but beta testers are beginning to see how it impacts their personal lives.

A New York-based software developer recently shared the Apple Intelligence beta's concise summary of a breakup text he'd received. The notification exemplifies how Apple's hopes for generative AI can collide with real life.

When Apple Intelligence arrives with iOS 18.1 later this month, one of its features will summarize incoming emails, texts, and audio transcriptions to help users sort through them more quickly. Apple likely expects that the functionality will mainly assist with work communications, but beta testers are beginning to see how it impacts their personal lives.

yes this was real
yes it happened yesterday
yes it was my birthday

Developer Nick Spreen discovered that his former partner had broken up with him when Apple Intelligence summarized a message as "No longer in a relationship; wants belongings from the apartment." He received the text on his birthday.

Last month, the Washington Post criticized Apple's take on generative AI for being no more resilient against hallucinations than OpenAI's ChatGPT or Microsoft's Copilot. It often misdescribed photos, made unwanted changes to pictures, provided incorrect directions, and inaccurately summarized messages.

However, perhaps unfortunately, Spreen confirmed that Apple Intelligence's summary was truthful in his case. The many other generative AI features coming to Apple devices in a few weeks might create equally surprising reactions.

One new feature included with the update is Writing Tools, which automatically proofreads, adjusts, and rewrites text to fix mistakes or change the sender's tone. It works across notes, messages, emails, and other apps.

Apple Intelligence will also make Siri behave more like ChatGPT by responding to natural language prompts and helping users organize a device's data. A later update will enable Siri to optionally request help from ChatGPT. Additionally, users will be able to make AI-based edits to photos and search for them using natural language queries.

This major update is expected to launch on October 28, bringing Apple Intelligence to the iPhone 15 Pro, all iPhone 16 models, and every M series iPad. Later updates will add AI generated emojis, generated cartoon images, advanced sketching features for the Notes app, automatic email sorting, and additional languages. These and other features might appear in iOS 18.2, 18.3, or 18.4.