Here’s How Apple Intelligence Notification Summaries Handle Breakup Texts
Relationships are complicated. One minute you’re happy and in love. Then your iPhone breaks up with you for your partner. What, isn’t this a universal experience?
Your iPhone likely won’t let you know that you and your partner are better off as friends, or that it’s them and not you—at least not if you’re using Apple’s public version of iOS. However, if you’ve taken the plunge into the iOS 18.1 beta , you may be heartbroken 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 in its latest beta versions. Among a number of new features is notification summary: Apple Intelligence reads your notifications, including texts, and, like ChatGPT, breaks down the information into easy-to-read summaries. This goal is so that you can view a summary of notifications and see what you missed, instead of wasting time scrolling through a sea of alerts and reading each one.
In theory, this is a great way to stay on top of missed messages. However, as more beta testers install iOS 18.1, we’re starting to put theory into practice. The latest example went viral, and for good reason: One user X looked at his iPhone running iOS 18.1 and found a summary of message notifications from his then-girlfriend that succinctly read: “No longer in a relationship; wants things from the apartment.”
The user shared a screenshot of X in a now-deleted post , adding that the resume was real and matched the texts sent , although he did not share the texts themselves (quite understandably). He also shared that there were only two texts , but that was enough to trigger a summary.
This is probably not how Apple intended this feature to be or how the company would like to advertise it. But since most people are sent a series of negative messages at one time or another, it will happen and it will be summed up.
Apple Intelligence only works on the iPhone 15 Pro, 15 Pro Max, and iPhone 16 series, so the user pool will be quite limited even when iOS 18.1 eventually breaks. But when it does, those users may be a little 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 quite another thing when your iPhone edits, summarizes, and manually delivers that news to the top of your notification feed. I think the future has already arrived.