Ice cold.
Ouch
That’s cold.
Apple’s latest iOS software update for its iPhones includes a series of generative AI-enabled “Apple Intelligence” upgrades. Among the many upgrades is the option to receive message AI-generated “summaries” of unread messages.
But in some scenarios, the feature could have some unintended, albeit hilarious consequences. Exhibit A: the breakup text.
A man took to X-formerly-Twitter yesterday to share an utterly devastating screenshot of Apple’s new AI message summary feature rounding up a series of breakup texts into succinct bullet points.
Despite the emotional subject matter, Apple’s AI paraphrased the dude’s now-ex-girlfriend’s parting messages into the breakup equivalent of Zoom meeting notes.
“No longer in a relationship; wants belongings from the apartment,” reads the AI summary.
“For anyone who’s wondered what an Apple Intelligence summary of a breakup text looks like,” software developer Nick Spreen captioned the post. In response to skepticism of whether the post was real, Spreen added in a follow-up post that “yes this was real” — and that “yes it was my birthday.”
It’s hard not to laugh at least a little at the dystopian screenshot, though we do feel bad that Spreen had to be a guinea pig for this particular slice of Apple’s vision for the future of texting.
Unreal and Dystopian
Spreen, who confirmed the validity of the messages to Ars Technica, explained that the real breakup texts were “something along the lines of I can’t believe you just did that, we’re done, I want my stuff.”
“I do feel like it added a level of distance to it that wasn’t a bad thing,” Spreen told Ars. “Maybe a bit like a personal assistant who stays professional and has your back even in the most awful situations.”
“But yeah, more than anything it felt unreal and dystopian,” he continued.
Spreen’s experience raises an important product question for Apple: are there some conversations that simply shouldn’t be auto-mediated by a chatbot?
A breakup notice is brutal enough, but imagine texts about a death in the family, or an ongoing crisis situation, getting neatly folded into AI-sanitized Teams call notes.
More on AI product updates no one asked for: Google Is Stuffing Annoying Ads Into Its Terrible AI Search Feature
