‘I’ve gotten some bizarre ones’: Man tries Apple Intelligence features on iOS 18. Then he sees what it does to his text messages

An iPhone owner tried using Apple Intelligence, the company’s new artificial intelligence, but was unimpressed.

Featured Video

Apple Intelligence is available on the company’s newest operating systems: iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1. It offers new writing tools, email and text summaries, and a smarter Photo app, among other features.

The new writing and texting features allow users to type and talk to Siri with audio conversations instantaneously transcribed. They can also find out more about messages and emails right on their lock screen.

However, many are calling the the overall usefulness of the new suite into question. In a post that received 1,392 views, TikTok user Bhdben (@bhdben) explained how the system fell short of his expectations.

Apple Intelligence fail

“So, I was super excited for the new Apple Intelligence features on iOS 18.1. But this is how it’s going so far,” Bhdben says.

According to the TikToker, Apple Intelligence offered up a misleading summary of some text messages he received.

“So I wake up to this,” he explained as he shared screenshot of a text message notification on his phone.

The notification was a summary of a series of texts he received in a group chat with his family. The texts were especially important given their context. The man knew that his family was dealing with issues with their septic tank due to a tree growing into it.

“House flooded, water stopped draining, prevented further damage,” the summary read.

However, this was a bit misleading.

After Bhdben looked at the actual text messages from his father and brother, he realized that Apple Intelligence’s summary was entirely wrong.

The house had not flooded and disaster was completely averted as his father had caught the issue in time.

“So the house didn’t flood,” the TikToker reiterated. “It just almost did.”

Many professional critics have expressed similar feelings about the new message summaries.

The New York Times Wirecutter referred to to the features as “(mostly) unremarkable.” It called the new notification summaries “extraneous” and “occasionally hilarious.” CNET called the the new artificial intelligence, “sometimes useful, sometimes amusing.”

Apple Intelligence vs artificial intelligence

The poor summary made the TikToker wonder if the problem lay with artificial intelligence software in general. To test this thesis, he asked ChatGPT to summarize the text messages for display on a lock screen.

ChatGPT offered a more accurate version.

“House flooding situation averted; caught water issue in time,” it read.

The man said ChatGPT offered a “way better” summary than Apple Intelligence.

“So someone messed up here,” he concluded.

The Daily Dot reached out to Apple via email and Bhdben by TikTok comment and direct message for more information.

Viewers agree

In the comments section, a number of viewers shared that their experiences with the new feature had been disappointing as well.

“I noticed the summaries are bad too,” one person wrote.

@bhdben #greenscreen #appleintelligence #ai #tech #ios18 ♬ original sound – Bhdben

“I’ve gotten some bizarre ones,” the creator responded.

“I’ve gotten some strange ones too. Still in beta so it’s to be expected,” another user added.

“DEFCON 1 would have been a better description,” someone else joked about the alarmist summary.

Internet culture is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here. You’ll get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.