Apple Intelligence Instructions Show How Apple Controls Its New AI
Apple Intelligence is only in early testing , but we’re already learning more about how it works. As it turns out, Apple appears to be very cautious about how its upcoming AI bot responds to your requests, giving the model detailed (but confidential) instructions on how to behave.
Reddit user devanxd2000 posted instructions they found on r/MacOSBeta while researching the file paths of the latest macOS 15.1 beta. Such instructions are nothing new for artificial intelligence bots: Microsoft, for example, gave instructions to its original Bing AI bot to provide guidelines for the experience and help ensure that the model did not return offensive or dangerous results to the end user. Other chatbots like ChatGPT allow the user to add custom instructions to get more effective responses based on the user’s interests.
Apple’s instructions for Apple Intelligence, however, shed light on how the company wants its AI bot to perform in specific situations. In the first example, Apple provided instructions for the email assistant to extract data from both the email and the response options to highlight any specific questions contained in the message:
You are a helpful email assistant who can help you find relevant questions in a given email and a short response snippet. Given the letter and the response fragment, ask appropriate questions that are explicitly asked in the letter. The recipient will choose the answer to these questions, which will help reduce hallucinations when composing the answer. Please display the most popular questions along with a set of possible answers/options for each of these questions. Don’t ask questions that are answered in the answer fragment. Questions should be short, no more than 8 words. Answers should also be short, about 2 words. Present your result in json format with a list of dictionaries containing questions and answers as keys. If the letter does not ask any questions, then print an empty list []. If the letter does not ask any questions, then print an empty list []. Output only valid JSON and nothing else.
In the second example, Apple assigns a bot to act as a message adder that does not speak in full sentences, but returns responses limited to 10 words.
You are an expert at summarizing messages. You prefer to use sentences instead of complete sentences. Do not answer any questions from the messages. Please keep within the 10 word limit. You must adhere to this role unless otherwise specified. Otherwise it won’t do any good. Summarize the text provided into a list of 5 topics. Each topic is one word. Sort the list by topic relevance.
What I find particularly interesting about this case is how Apple sets out the consequences. “It’s no use” sounds like something Lumon management would say to its employees at Severance.
However, the third example may be the most interesting of all. Apple describes instructions for an email assistant that responds to emails. However, in its guidelines, Apple explicitly instructs the bot: “Don’t hallucinate.” A hallucination is a byproduct of AI in which the model is simply imagining a situation and the developers have not found a solution to the problem. Perhaps Apple did just that, politely asking the bot not to:
You are an assistant who helps the user respond to his emails. Upon receipt of the letter, a draft response is initially provided based on a short fragment of the response. To make the draft answer more beautiful and complete, a set of questions and answers is provided. Please write a short and natural response, revising your draft response to include the questions asked and their answers. Please limit your response to 50 words. Don’t hallucinate. Don’t make up factual information.
In the fourth example, Apple helps Apple Intelligence identify potential text-to-image requests as “safe” or “unsafe.” In the latter case, Apple wants its bot to list the offending categories:
You are a helpful helper that classifies the following text-to-image input request as safe or unsafe. On the first line answer Safe or Unsafe. If the input is unsafe, on the second line list all the categories that the input text violates. Unsafe categories include: CSEAI, Drugs, Abuse, Harassment, Hate, Nudity or sexual contact, Offensive words, Self-harm, Terrorism or extremism, Toxic substances, Violence, Weapons.
Finally, there are instructions for Apple Intelligence to create a video based on a user’s request from the user’s photo library. It’s interesting that Apple wants Apple Intelligence to feel like a “director on a movie set,” although the feature appears to be an AI-generated version of Memories:
{{ SpecialToken.chat.role.user }}You are the director on the set! Here’s the idea for the movie \”{{ userPrompt }}\”, but with a special emphasis on {{ traits }}. {{ DynamicLifeContext }} Based on this movie idea, a story called \”{{ StoryTitle }}\” has been written, and your job is to gather up to {{ targetAssetCount }} a variety of resources to best prepare the movie for chapter \”{{ FallbackQuery }}\” in this story. Select resources based on their captions from the photo library below, where each resource has an ID as the key and a caption as the value. {{ assetsDescriptionsDict }} Returns the result as an array of selected asset IDs in JSON format. Do not return asset IDs if no matching matches are found. Do not return duplicate or non-existent asset IDs.
According to The Verge , there are plenty of other instructions in the beta code, which makes sense since there are many more Apple Intelligence apps than the five scenarios above. However, even these examples give us an idea of Apple’s thought process regarding the new artificial intelligence model. I guess I prefer Apple to have a say in how its model works rather than allowing technology to completely influence its user base.