This Is How Apple Intelligence's Notification Summaries Handle Breakup Texts
Relationships are complicated. One minute, you're happy and in love. The next, your iPhone is breaking up with you for your partner. What, is that not a universal experience?
Your iPhone likely won't sit you down to let you know you and your partner are better off as friends, or that its them, and not you—at least, not if you're using Apple's publicly available version of iOS. However, if you've bravely dipped your toe into the iOS 18.1 beta, you might have your heart broken by your smartphone and its new AI features.
You can thank Apple Intelligence, and all the new AI-powered changes, that Apple is currently testing with its latest betas. Among a number of new features is notification summaries: Apple Intelligence reads through your notifications, including texts, and, like ChatGPT, breaks down the information into easy-to-read summaries. That goal is for you to glance at your notification summaries and catch up with what you missed, rather than waste time scrolling through a sea of alerts and reading each and every one.
In theory, it's a neat way to stay on top of your missed messages. However, as more beta testers install iOS 18.1, we're starting to put theory to practice here. The latest example went viral, and for good reason: One user on X glanced down at his iPhone running iOS 18.1 to find a notification summary of texts from his then-girlfriend, which succinctly read: "No longer in a relationship; wants belongings from apartment."
The user shared the screenshot on X in a now-deleted post, adding that the summary was real, and that it was accurate to the texts sent, though he did not share the texts themselves (quite understandably). He also shared that it was only two texts, but that was enough to trigger the summary.
It's likely not what Apple intended the feature to be, or how the company would like it advertised. But seeing as most people are sent a series of negative messages at one point or another, this is going to happen, and it's going to get summarized.
Apple Intelligence only works on iPhone 15 Pro, 15 Pro Max, and the iPhone 16 series, so the user pool will be quite limited even when iOS 18.1 eventually drops. But when it does, those users might be a bit surprised by some of the summaries they receive. It's one thing to see bad news spelled out verbatim in a message from a friend; it's another thing entirely to have your iPhone edit, summarize, and hand-deliver that news to the top of your notification feed. The future is now, I guess.