How many folks do you know who don’t trust iCloud? Or “The Cloud” in general? Quite a few, I would bet. When Apple rolled out iCloud in 2011, it offered, as all things do, a promise. Trying to move on from the problems associated with its previous troubled cloud service, MobileMe, it was a rebrand, a re-architecting, and a repeat of prior problems that missed the target and generated enough criticism to turn iCloud into a punch line for all jokes about “The Cloud.”
Apple has steadily improved iCloud (it still has issues), but not enough to remove that tarnish. The recent flap over summaries generated by Apple Intelligence threatens to do the same to that new brand, and quite frankly to the concept of Artificial Intelligence in general. Some might see that as a good thing, but that’s another issue for another day.
The issues with Apple Intelligence are compounding, largely due to mistakes of Apple’s own making in its rush to correct its way-too-late entry into a game it is losing. Overhyping the beta release as if it were a finished product certainly didn’t help. That investment in dollars essentially removed the excuse that mistakes can happen in betas. The “New Siri” remains delayed. And, like every AI release I’ve seen from other makers, once the initial shine wears off, the rough edges begin to show and cracks are revealed. I can’t count the number of users who claimed they’ve turned off most of Apple Intelligence features.
This latest flap deals with Apple Intelligence summaries. There have been legions of screenshots posted of humorous and not-so-humorous, inaccurate, confusing, and downright misleading summaries. The BBC has now twice called out Apple for misleading and inaccurate summaries. The most recent one named a darts player the winner of a competition before the match had even been played.
Apple has now responded, reminding everyone about the beta status and that a future update will further clarify when the text being displayed is summarized by Apple Intelligence. In essence, a warning label.
Quite a few big dogs in the Apple influencer game have already barked, weighing in with possible suggestions and warnings. (See these links from John Gruber and Jason Snell.) There’s somewhat of a debate as to who should have ultimate control over whether or not users see summaries. Should developers be able to opt out of having notifications summarized from their apps, or should users have control by opting out of the feature? Either way, in my opinion, it points to essentially a defeat and also a larger problem.
First impressions matter. Screwing the pooch in a first impression typically leaves a mark.
Given what we already knew about AI hallucinations, mistakes, and problems before Apple belatedly and hurriedly entered the game, I don’t think anyone thought Apple would have solved that problem. Thus, the shield of announcing it as a beta. But the dollars spent on promoting it certainly didn’t offer enough prominent caveats to cut through the glitzy messaging. Apple Intelligence, beta or not, was the tentpole marketing feature. Heck, Apple’s announcements moved markets as if gold had been discovered.
Summaries are just one of many features that AI offers, Apple’s version and others. Arguments can be made that summaries are a good thing in a busy world, and also that they are completely unnecessary given that there is a level of mistrust that already existed pre-Apple Intelligence, that requires, almost demands, users to check the work generated by the AI before relying on it.
However Apple chooses to work its way out of this latest problem of its own making, its misplaced marketing miscues have called enough attention to Artificial Intelligence to make it a problem for that entire segment of the tech industry. What was a key selling feature is quickly becoming the butt of another joke.
If this was a game of darts, Apple’s shot would have not only missed the target but also missed the board.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3 
I agree that the rollout has been bumpy and rushed with sloppy marketing. That’s pretty clear.
That said, I do not agree that this is of their own making. This is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation where the tech press creates and then hypes and over hypes problems and rumors. First they hyped the Vision Pro for years (car too). Then they turned their attention to AI. Oh, no! The sky is falling because Siri isn’t what we want it to be and Apple is behind on AI. Strangely enough, at the same time underplaying and undervaluing the very real and useful machine learning features that Apple has been steadily rolling out and improving over the past 5+ years. Text from images, object recognition in images, etc.
I would argue that equal to the “problem” of Apple’s AI rollout is a tech “news” industry that makes its living with zero accountability to truth. We’ve seemingly accepted that tech news is now just a constant swirl of rumor, speculation and demands for the next new thing. Perhaps the larger problem is a culture of thousands of creators and millions of enthusiasts that have made “tech” the center of their waking lives. All of our problems are caused by tech. Everything will be fixed by tech. It’s a very confusing whirlwind, circular process.
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