Apple Intelligence bought the promise of an integrated personal AI system to streamline our busy lives, but one feature is bringing that practicality into question – AI notification summaries. While in theory, concise and condensed notifications are a handy feature, some users’ cryptic and unintentionally hilarious results are raising more questions than answers.
Last month Apple Intelligence launched to general users in iOS 18.1, and since then reviews have been mixed, to say the least. While its new writing tools and photo clean-up capabilities are handy (albeit nothing new – Google’s Magic Editor got there first), Apple’s bizarre AI notification summaries are the accidental star of Apple Intelligence for all the wrong reasons.
While Apple Intelligence’s summaries are essentially a TLDR of all your notifications, they lack the context of human sarcasm, jokes and slang, making for some hilariously blunt and bizarre summaries. While the feature seems to work better with long-form emails, casual texts and humourous tweets are transformed into cryptic riddles rather than helpful synopsises.
While admittedly it might not be the time-saving feature that Apple intended, they certainly add a refreshing hilarity to bog-standard notifications. Some users are even seeing them as a challenge, trying to decipher the mysterious summaries out of context. “Big fan of Apple Intelligence’s summary feature – mainly because it turns every boring notification I wouldn’t previously read into a cute little mystery to unwrap,” Threads user danielocnnr wrote.
For more insight into Apple’s latest AI features, check out why Apple Intelligence could be bad news for AI gadgets like the Rabbit R1 and AI Pin. If you’re after more AI news, take a look at how spatial intelligence is set to revolutionise AI’s understanding of the world.
