Apple Intelligence notification summaries keep failing hilariously

Leonard Sengere Avatar

For years, Apple has been known as the latecomer but bestcomer. They were almost always last to adopt new advancements in tech but would implement in a magical way as to be forgiven for coming to the party late. 

It appears the same is not ringing true with Apple Intelligence, their AI meant to rival Gemini integration on Android or even third party stuff like ChatGPT. 

We talked about Apple Intelligence’s notification summarization feature and how it hilariously summarized some guy’s break up text to “No longer in a relationship; wants belongings from the apartment.”

It turns out it’s just bad at text message summaries. It’s decent at emails but when it’s casual chat, it struggles. 

An Atlantic reporter got a summary that said “Orbituary shared: Name Surname”. They thought that guy had died when in fact, the guy was telling them that a relative of theirs had died. 

Other examples of unintentionally funny summaries included: 

  •  The one in the pic about parents running over toddlers. 
  • “Orbituary shared: Namey McNameface.” Made it seem like Namey was dead when he was sharing that a relative of his had died. 
  • “Multiple people at you front yard.” Made it seem like a riot was about to happen in someone’s yard when it was summarising doorbell alerts from different times. 
  • “Package 8 stops away, delivered, and will be delivered tomorrow.” Try and make sense of that package status summary. 
  • “Multiple likes and flirtatious comments.” Okay, that one would be cool to see for my Instagram notifications. 

Some have been blunt and are saying Apple Intelligence summaries are terrible. When you consider more serious blunders like the one below, you can understand why. 

“Georgia governor dead from Hurricane Helene.” Said the summary when in fact, the governor had said 11 people had died in his state after Hurricane Helene. 

It might be wise to go back to the drawing board on this one. Notification summaries are cool as a concept, and in some cases are probably convenient, but Apple’s current product kinda sucks

4 comments

What’s your take?

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  1. The Empress

    There’s a reason why Apple is always the late comer. People really tend to underestimate the benefits of hindsight and time.
    When you know exactly what mistakes to avoid and you are not in a rush. You are almost unbeatable!
    This has allowed Apple to generate an aura of competence.
    Since Apple never reveals how many months/years and iterations it took before they could give a product that “Apple flair “. Over time people subconsciously started to think that the engineers and programmers at Apple are a different breed. Better than everyone else meaning what they produce must be better than anything else.

    But on Ai it was very different. This trend came from nowhere fast and when even midrange phones got some form of Ai. Apple was forced to do something it wasn’t used to. They had to try to quickly implement a feature without the benefit of hindsight of seeing where the android world got it wrong on a strict timetable .
    And this is the result. A mediocre product that doesn’t come close to Apple’s high standards. It will get a lot better as time goes on but aura has been reduced just a little bit.

    1. Leonard Sengere

      Makes so much sense. If you get to refine a product after others did the trial and error you end up looking like a super being. When you’re forced to iterate and tweak out in the open, all of a sudden you appear just as human as the rest of us.

      You’re right, a little of the shine has been scrapped. Flops like the Vision Pro, as technically impressive as the hardware is also adds to removing some of the aura.

  2. Niqqa

    Launched their iPhone 16 advertised AI that didn’t came with the new flagship was proof enough that they weren’t ready for it, perhaps given it time to August next year could’ve done better but the pressure they got from offering the same product from iphone 12 to 16 meant that offering iPhone 16 without AI in 2024 would throw them under the bus. Its either shape up or ship out, they should do better with iPhone 17 offer some new stuff to blub about, Huawei is coming quick its no longer on Apple with hardware software optimization Huawei does too. Its high time they offer something

    1. Leonard Sengere

      It’s been L after L for Apple this season. They look out of sorts. This is by no means the end but it’s been an embarrassing and somewhat concerning period for them. They can’t afford to get iPhone 17 wrong again.

Join Waitlist We will inform you when the product arrives in stock. Please leave your valid email address below.