iPhones, iPads, and Macs with Apple Intelligence now have a unique AI feature that summarizes notifications for you. Starting with iOS / iPadOS 18.1 and macOS 15.1, when multiple notifications pile up for a given app, the tiny LLM that Apple has crammed into our stuff tries its hardest to algorithm up a brief overview for you. (Part of a group text with lots of people? It’ll try to tell you what they’re discussing.) This is sometimes good. It is very often funny.
I like the way the summaries handle some of my Apple Home notifications — like when I read “Garage changed status multiple times; recently closed” in lieu of a stack of messages about my garage door. The wording changes, but without fail (so far), it’s been right about whether the last thing it did was open or close, so I don’t have to open Apple Home or my garage camera to verify it. (I still do sometimes because LLMs can be lying liars.)
The trouble comes when it’s trying to briefly convey things like text messages, emails, and Slack notifications. They’re usually vaguely in the ballpark, in the same way that saying Cormac McCarthy’s postapocalyptic novel The Road is about a father and son who take a walk together. I guess that’s not wrong, but boy does it miss the point.
Add the mini-LLM’s problems grasping appropriate context to the chaos of human communication, and things can get very funny. Here are just a few examples I’ve collected online from my colleagues at The Verge and from my own phone.
Right after the first iOS 18.1 betas, I saw this gem, reading, “Apology for subpar communication; life busy; not ready for a relationship.”
Woof. It’s bad enough getting broken up with via text message. Is getting the message first from an AI summary better? Well, it cuts to the chase. I’ll give it that.
If you’re like me, you hate notifications and tend to ignore certain noisy apps. Now, imagine you’ve woken up at 1AM and groggily unlocked your phone, only to learn that you’re about to get mobbed John Wick-style by “multiple people” at your front and back doors and in your driveway.
Just make sure the puppy is safe, I guess.
As a heavy Apple Shortcuts user, I feel Matthew Cassinelli’s irritation at learning that there aren’t new features coming — Apple Intelligence just conflated two unrelated notifications.
If I weren’t accustomed to getting random emails about screeners, I might have been very confused about the Writers Guild of America’s (which Vox Media is a part of) invitation to look at its butt. Again, context is very important.
Okay, this actually is pretty much exactly what The Onion’s headline in this email was, so great job, Apple Intelligence.
This is a very uncomfortable collection of things to summarize. (Also, that Microsoft thing? That’s about a gender-detecting AI tool that 404 Media reported Microsoft had accidentally left active.)
Screenshot: iOS notification summary
What movie is bad? Is the button why it’s bad? (Editor’s note: look closely at the first image in this tweet.)
Seriously, though, why won’t it just tell me what the movie is?
What have we learned?
Are Apple Intelligence notification summaries a life-changing feature? Ha ha, no. But I don’t hate them. Notifications are an awful, constant intrusion that my attention-deficient brain loathes anyway; at least the summaries punch things up now and again. I think this last Threads post sums up my feelings pretty well:
Oh, and here’s one more for the road that came in while we were editing this story:
