Apple AI failure? Writing tool struggles with profanity, "strike" on sensitive topics

Author: Li Dan

Source: Hard AI

Last week, Apple's personal intelligent system Apple Intelligence landed on iPhone and other Apple devices for the first time through the developer beta version of iOS 18.1. One of the first features of iPhone artificial intelligence (AI) - the writing tool Writing Tools, which was launched just a week ago, has sparked controversy and been criticized by netizens.

According to Apple, Writing Tools allows users to rewrite, proofread, and summarize text in almost any scenario, including emails (Mail), memos (Notes), Pages documents, and various third-party apps. Some netizens have demonstrated that the tool can make harsh words in conversations more polite. However, some media outlets have pointed out that when users deal with certain topics, the tool may show users that the AI-generated suggestions may not be of high quality.

Specifically, when users need to rearrange text, Apple Intelligence can be called almost anywhere in the new iOS system. However, if users attempt to rewrite paragraphs or sentences containing vulgar language, they will see a system warning informing them: "Writing Tools are not designed to handle this type of content." Through this text warning, the system alerts users that the quality of the rewritten content by AI may differ from the original text.

On social media X, a user posted a short video showing the use of Apple Intelligence to rewrite the text message "Let’s fxxx daddy." The result generated by AI was described as "unbearable to watch," as it was a literal word-for-word translation, changing it to a sexual context with the father.

Under this post, netizens commented that the AI-rewritten content is "toxic," some found it awkward, and some sarcastically questioned if Apple had added some street AI to mock Siri. Some netizens also mentioned, "Imagine, what would happen if you really sent out this rewritten message."

Changing swear words is not the only situation that will trigger warnings from the iOS system. If a user's content mentions drugs, murder, or homicide, similar warnings will also appear, as shown in the screenshot below.

According to some media reports, Apple Intelligence will also display sentence suggestion warnings when users use untrained words or phrases. For example, during a trial of an AI writing tool, an individual from the media replaced the word "sh***y" with "crappy" in an attempt to make the AI warning disappear, but the suggested warning returned by the AI tool remained exactly the same as before the replacement. In response, the media has requested Apple to provide more information on which topics the collaborative tool has not been trained on.

It is believed by the media that Apple may avoid any controversy by prohibiting AI from handling certain words, topics, and tones when rewriting sentences. In any case, Apple Intelligence-driven writing tools are not suitable for generating new content from scratch. Apple hopes to issue warnings to users when AI is reviewing original text words.

In addition to the controversial writing tools, Apple also released some AI features last week, including: new features for Siri, allowing Siri to switch between text and voice, answering thousands of questions on how to use iPhones and other Apple devices; new features for Mail, including an urgent email section and providing full text summaries of emails; new features for Photos, allowing users to search for photos in everyday language, input text for AI to create videos from photos, and transcribe voice to text to generate summaries.

Many AI features introduced by Apple at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June this year have not been launched yet, with Apple stating they will be released next year. These features include Image Playground for image creation, Genmoji for creating personalized emojis, Priority Notifications for notifications, a more powerful Siri with screen awareness, and Chat GPT not yet integrated into AI for iPhone and iPad. Currently, only registered developers can experience iPhone AI. If Apple launches more AI features next year and targets a wider user base, there may be more criticisms