I Tried Apple’s AI Writing Tools on My iPhone, Here’s How They Work

“Apple does things practically.” Or “Apple is late because it’s perfecting technology.” “Would you rather be first or best?” These are just some of the recurring arguments you’ll find in any hot Reddit thread or social media post hunting for rage bait.

But there is some truth to it. And a whole lot of hidden technology that sometimes takes a decade to reveal. Apple Intelligence is a prime example of such a leap, and is seen as Apple’s answer to the rush to generative AI.

Apple Intelligence launched late last month with the iOS 18.1 developer beta, giving people the first chance to try it out for themselves. And that’s exactly what I did.

Artificial intelligence is nothing new for Apple

But first, a quick primer on how we got here. Remember the Apple Newton MessagePad? Its much-derided handwriting recognition feature, internally codenamed Rosetta, was introduced in 1995. Apple engineer Steve Salomon invented the technology in 1987.

Its foundations were based on neural networks, aided by segmentation and a language model that absorbed dictionaries and probabilistic grammars. Sound familiar? Well, it’s the typical AI sauce being poured all over social media by AI hype guys.

Back in 2014, Apple — without any public announcement — moved Siri to the fruits of machine learning such as deep neural networks, natural language processing, and convolutional neural networks.

The point I want to make here is that even the most mundane Apple products have been running cutting-edge AI for years. From turning your prettiest photos into a keepsake video to learning your phone usage habits to extend battery life, machine learning has been at the heart of the iPhone for some time now.

Apple Intelligence was just an attempt to silence shareholders who were clearly unhappy about seeing all those “ChatGPT can change your life and make you a millionaire” posts on the X and worried that their blue-chip horse was falling behind. So it’s no wonder that Apple Intelligence didn’t exactly make a splash with the WWDC 2024 audience. It chose the safe side of practicality — “AI for the rest of us,” as Apple puts it.

Apple Intelligence has a few different sides. It can summarize web pages, intelligently sort notifications, generate images, and more. It also promises to make you a better writer with Apple’s new Writing Tools—a set of features that Apple says “help you find the right words virtually everywhere you write.” This is one of Apple Intelligence’s biggest goals, and it’s what I focused on the most during my time with Apple Intelligence. Here are my first impressions.

Hands-on experience with Apple writing tools

“Words Matter Everywhere,” says Apple’s slogan for Writing Tools. Is It Good?

Well, it works, but I wouldn’t trust it to my professional work. There are a few reasons. First, it tends to miss the point. Second, it raises a whole universe of ethical dilemmas. Just look at an email I wrote to an academic asking for her expert insights.

Apple Intelligence did a grammatically perfect job rewriting this, but it left out two of the most important and detailed points I was hoping to discuss with my source. For comparison, here’s what I got from Claude with the basic “rewrite this” command.

Keep in mind that this was the first email task I implemented Writing Tools into. But it gets worse. I selected the email content and chose the “Professional” setting, hoping that Apple Intelligence would make my text sound more, well, professional.

The result was a pretty big fail that skipped the topic and created a whole new request that I didn’t ask for in the first place. My original email was about an interview request and recommendations for research materials. Here’s what Apple Intelligence gave me:

“I am writing to express my interest in the opportunity to complete an internship at your esteemed institution.”

But it still misses the mark. Again. And again. Especially with the Summary, Key Points, and List features that are part of the Writing Tools suite. The crashes are consistent across Apple apps and third-party options like Gmail, in case you were wondering.

I tried to summarize an email about an auction of vintage Apple items related to Steve Jobs’ legacy. The email mentioned a working Apple-1 computer as a “standout” item. Writing Tools has missed the crown jewel in all of its AI iterations. For comparison, here’s the summary I got from Shortwave, an excellent email app that draws its power from OpenAI’s latest GPT-4o model.

Shortwave’s email summary is thorough. It picks out the most important details, especially the real focus, from a long wall of text. The app does this for free and doesn’t require an iPhone 15 Pro. It’s basically hardware-agnostic.

Apple’s writing tools are a bit better at handling long notes, but they tend to leave out key details. I think the failures also have something to do with the pitfalls of what Apple considers an appropriate length for a “summary” and what the appropriate level of detail should be while still qualifying the response as a “concise” version.

Another problem is the lack of flexibility and versatility. There’s really no room to maneuver. There’s no manual adjustment feature in the Writing Tools. What Apple considers “friendly” may not be friendly enough. Much better alternatives are already available.

Take Paragraph AI, a GPT-based writing tool that exists as a mobile keyboard and browser extension. It offers a series of slider controls for customizing your writing tone with presets like informal/formal, friendly/assertive, and pessimistic/optimistic.

What’s more, you can make your paragraphs into lists, text message format, email and full-fledged article, with the ability to adjust the word length. Of course, it can also create replies, a function that only requires a quick copy and paste. The whole system works really well.

And here’s the best part, which actually contradicts Apple’s promise of deep system-level AI integration. Paragraph AI functions as a keyboard on your phone, like Gboard or the iPhone’s featureless keyboard, meaning you can use it in any app you choose. Apple is waiting for third-party apps to fully adopt the Apple Intelligence Suite.

There’s plenty of room for improvement now. After all, it’s just a beta phase of Apple Intelligence, so some hiccups are to be expected. What’s more, Apple isn’t short on money—certainly not after raking in about $29 billion in operating cash flow last quarter—or top talent in the industry. In other words, Apple Intelligence can safely expect to see a ton of improvements in the near future.

A lot of work to do

Apple Intelligence promises a lot of cool stuff, but not all of it will find widespread acceptance or long-term acceptance. Genmojis and the ability to create custom images in seconds? Yes, that sounds cool. And no, I won’t use it every day. My teenage brother might.

But even for him, I think the existing set of “cool” GIFs and emoji kitchen is enough to flaunt his funny bone in chat, rather than typing out a full-text prompt to create a custom image. This can help in certain situations, but not in heated chats where quick wit and witty comebacks are more important than masterfully crafted AI art.

Email summaries? Sounds practical, sure. But let’s be honest. We use email for serious stuff. For chatting about K-pop stars and juicy leftovers, we have iMessage, WhatsApp, etc. Email is for serious stuff, like work communications, academic intrigue, tedious tax obligations, and other such tasks.

The dangers of ignorance are easy to spot. And given the way Apple Intelligence does it, I could lose my job. Intelligent sorting and summarizing of notifications also fit into similar patterns. I wouldn’t want to risk AI judging what’s important to me in order to bypass the Focus Mode settings.

No thanks. I’ll do it myself, customizing it for each app. At first glance, Writing Tools seems like the most practical piece of Apple Intelligence. But it comes with its own ethical baggage.

For the past few months, I’ve been asking editors at various newsrooms about the ethics of integrating AI into their workflows. When it comes to the editorial side, almost everyone is hesitant—or outright rejects it. Most simply won’t let AI touch a story, from rough drafts to copy editing and copy editing.

So who exactly is this Writing Tools package aimed at? I’m not sure. As a reporter, I can’t fathom its utility because of the ethical dilemma. In my role as the shadow threat of Reddit and Slack comment sections, I will never admit that an AI might be more brazen than I am. And certainly not when it’s more error-prone than my forgetful lifestyle.

I’m sure there’s an audience out there who lives a life with lower stakes—even reckless ones, I’d say. But for now, Apple’s intelligence writing tools feel like a half-baked attempt at catching up. The upside is that Apple has plenty of time to perfect things before Apple Intelligence’s public launch, and the company certainly has a lot of work ahead of it.