Most iPhone owners see little to no value in Apple Intelligence so far

The only bit of excitement I've experienced about this, was when they announced it will be force-disabled in Europe, so I didn't have to turn it off myself

Oh don’t worry, it’s coming to the eu
- That’s horrible news

They need to release Apple Strength and Apple Dexterity to make the experience more complete

That would require Apple wisdom
- I can’t afford Apple Wisdom.
Hard to argue against a nice quality build.
- but Apple Karma is so wrecked, it's hopeless

I feel like this can be generalized to AI in general for most people. I still don't see much usefulness or quality in output in the scenarios where I've been exposed to AI LLMs.

I feel the same way about AI as I felt about the older generation of smartphone voice assistants. The error rate remains high enough that i would never trust it to do anything important without double checking its work. For most tasks, the effort that goes into checking and correcting the output is comparable to the effort I would have spent to just do it myself, so I just do it myself.
- For programming it saves insane time.
Same. I'm not opposed to it existing, I'm just kind of... lukewarm about it. I find the output overly verbose and factually questionable, and that's not the experience I'm looking for.
Even with other forms of generative AI, there are very few notable uses for it that isn't just a gimmick/having fun with it, and not in a way achievable via other means.
Being able to add a thing to a photo is neat, but also questionably useful, when it is also doable with a few minutes of Photoshop.
I've a friend who claims it can be useful for scripts and quick data processing, but I've personally not had that experience when giving it a spin.
It's a nice way to search for content or answers without all the ads that websites have nowadays. Of course, it's only a matter of time until the AI/LLM responses are surrounded by (or embedded with) ads as well.
- llm and search should not be in the same sentence
- Or it much prefers to give you answers from "partners." For example:
  Me: How can I find a good set of headphones?
  AI: A lot of people look for guides and reviews to find a good set of headphones. The important features to look for are...
  <insert overcomplicated nonsense here>
  . This can be overwhelming, so consider narrowing the search to a reliable product line like those by Beats (or whatever advertiser). Do you want some links to well-reviewed products?
  Ick...
- Install Firefox and download uBlock Origin
Shitposting has never been easier though!
As a novice with little training, I've found AI to be helpful with running a server. Other than that, I depend on my own internet searches for info.

Yup. Photo cleanup was cool to try once, but I’ll never use it again. Removing stuff from photos with a single tap also bugs me a bit in general, I’m not sure it’s something we should make so easy. Message summaries are absolute shit and have already caused confusion for me. I’m not even talking about the proper notification summaries, just the auto-summaries in the preview lines of the whole iMessage list. A number of them have really fucked with me. For example, a friend asked me to FaceTime her in a few days, and the summary just said “FaceTime request.” And I was like “shit, did I miss a call?” As far as I can tell I can’t turn that off without disabling the entire AI setting.

I’m also not sure how to feel about all of Apple’s privacy talk when it comes to their AI features. They say certain features will stay on device, which is great, but for everything else, as far as I’ve noticed there is no mention of what goes to OpenAI’s servers, since their AI is still primarily powered by OpenAI. There’s actually no mention of OpenAI in any of the disclaimers or warnings I read when I first enabled it.

Apple Intelligence isn't "powered by OpenAI" at all. It's not even based on it.
The only time OpenAI servers are contacted is when you ask Siri something it can't compute with Apple Intelligence, but even then it clearly asks the user first if they want to send the request to ChatGPT.
Everything else regarding Apple Intelligence runs either on-device or on their "Private Cloud Compute" infrastructure, which apparently uses M2 Ultra chips. You then have to trust Apple that their claims regarding privacy are true, but you kind of do that when choosing an iPhone in the first place. There's some pretty interesting tech behind this actually.
- I appreciate the clarification! I definitely misinterpreted the reporting about this, and clearly didn't dig deeply enough. This makes me feel a bit better about using the non-ChatGPT features.
You can turn off (specifically) Message summaries in settings > Apps > messages > Summarize Messages
- Well shit, thank you. I swear I searched for that setting before, but there it is!
There's no way OpenAI is letting Apple use them for free. So where is the money coming from? AI is the hot new thing and expensive to operate so I imagine Apple is paying quite a lot. There needs to be a new form of income or this wouldn't make sense from a business perspective. I image there is data harvesting from the AI service.
- I'd actually be surprised if Apple pays anything to OpenAI at the moment. Obviously running some Siri requests through ChatGPT (after the user confirms that's what they want to do) is quite expensive for OpenAI, but Apple Intelligence doesn't touch OpenAI servers at all (just Siri has ChatGPT integration).
  Even then, there'll obviously still be a lot of requests, but the problem OpenAI has is that they aren't really in a negotiating position. Google owns Android and so most phones default to Gemini, instantly giving them a huge advantage in marketshare. OpenAI doesn't have its own platform, so Apple having the second largest install base of all smartphone operating systems is OpenAI's best chance.
  Apple might benefit from OpenAI but OpenAI needs Apple way more than the other way around. Apple Intelligence runs perfectly fine (I mean, as "perfectly fine" as it currently does) without OpenAI, the only functionality users would lose is the option to redirect "complex" Siri requests to ChatGPT.
  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if OpenAI actually pays Apple for the integration, just like Google pays Apple a hefty sum to be the default search engine for Safari.

I went into settings on my phone and disabled it immediately

I tried it one time, and it's just as "slop" as the rest of generative AI. CEOs have no taste

CEOs have no ~~taste~~ clue
Techbro CEOs are especially susceptible to the hypetrain and then want it implemented somehow, despite the tech not living up to the imaginary magic bullet they got from their superficial info.

I gotta be honest, the push notification summaries are more annoying than they are useful. Like. I’m going to read a text blurb of 100 or so characters. It’s an extra step to see the summary and then the actual message itself.

As the general rule I feel the same about more or less all of the "AI" that is available to consumers from the likes of Google, OpenAI, etc.

It just seems more like a different way to do things with digital assistants or search engines that we have already been able to do for years.

IMHO, they have pretty different use cases. For example, I can’t use a search engine to compose things.

From my experience iOS actually got dumber. At least the keyboard did, which is annoying. There's a certain way how keys responded to what you typed which has been a thing since the first iPhone. But two updates ago or so, they butchered it completely (especially if you type in German), making texting pretty difficult at times. I've asked other users and some of them experience the same issues in that certain keys just do not want to get tapped sometimes because the algorithm expects something else, making hitboxes of unwanted keys way too big. Needlesly to say I'm not ready to trust Apple's Intelligence just yet.

I experience this way too much. I have a nostaligia for when all of the problems I had with computers (broadly) were because I did something wrong... not because the computer is trying to fix something or guess something or anticipate something. Just let me type.
Yesterday, I typed out the letters of a word I wanted, and after typing a second word, I saw my iPhone "correct" the first word I typed to something else entirely. NO. Stop assuming I made a mistake. You cause more problems than you solve.
- It's crazy because they've tried to 'fix' something that wasn't broken at all. It was one of the best features. Most users didn't even notice there was an algorithm behind their keyboard. It just felt natural. But now it's so aggressive, texting can almost feel like a warzone.
The iOS keyboard is one of the worst pieces of software I’ve ever used. It is actively hostile towards what I’m trying to type.
Is this a documented feature? In that it will modify the hit boxes for keys as you’re typing, based on likely next key press.
- As far as I know it has been part of iOS since the first iPhone because Steve Jobs didn‘t think people would enjoy typing on a small touch screens otherwise. I am assuming all digital keyboards have something like that to make writing easier.
I have a theory that the key hit boxes slowly have error introduced to them over time.
Sort of like “my phone is slow” except not, because there’s no perceivable performance loss on iPhones other than battery degradation.

Daily iPhone user. Haven’t really noticed any difference. They really pushed how tightly integrated the experience would be, but honestly, I don’t really notice.

Maybe they integrated it so well that it looks exactly the same as what they started with.

Probably worth noting, this survey was taken before 18.2 went live with a ChatGPT integration, image generation, etc.

Even with integrations, a lot of the automatic replies basically boil down to “yes, thanks” and “no thank you” to every text. It isn’t even like… A longer message. It’s just two or three words, tops. If I’m going to use AI to write my texts, it’s going to be for something longer than a “yes lol” text.
- Agreed.
  IMHO, the only truly useful thing is writing tools and Siri being able to query ChatGPT for complex questions instead of telling people to pull out their phone and search the web.
  The stuff everyone was actually interested in is likely in 18.4. On-screen awareness, integration with installed apps, contextual replies, etc.
- Weird. New installs usually get some sort on onboarding screen that explains how to activate the new stuff.
  The 18.2 Chat GPT stuff can be manually enabled under settings > Apple intelligence > scroll way down > Chat GPT. Once enabled, writing tools and Siri will give you the option to send a query to ChatGPT instead of Apple’s model.
  If Siri gets stumped, it will ask if you want to query GPT. Or you can just prompt it to Ask Chat GPT ______.
  Writing tools has it buried under “compose” which is at the very bottom of the writing tools sheet.
Oh, good point

As a normal user, I don't find Ai useful.

Like, anybody's, for much of anything other than generating fever-dreams and Plex art.

code, tho.

Bash scripts, maybe but, it's not necessary for me.

It's almost like siri already does what people want it to, and anything beyond that is a waste of time and resources

I’m very much enjoying the GenMoji stuff. Being able to send or react with an emoji tailored to the situation is not useful, but it’s fun when you come up with a good one.

Also Siri is definitely more functional than it used to be. It understands when I correct myself or change my mind. Very handy. Still far from perfect though.

Also on iPad all the AI-driven handwriting cleanup and stuff is really nice when taking notes.

But otherwise it’s not super useful. I don’t like the notification summaries, they aren’t very good. Though they are sometimes hilarious. Like Ring being summarized as “Thirteen people at your door and gunshots heard.”

Yeah Siri being more understanding is pretty nice and has gotten me to actually use it more again, but beyond that none of it is super useful to me.
…I did enjoy finally getting to make “shrimp with cowboy hat” using Genmoji after Apple kept using that as an example, though
- I made a “Sanderlanche” emoji for use when discussing Brandon Sanderson’s mastery of story structure. Reading every one of his books I reach a point where it feels like I have to frantically push to the end.
  It’s just a book with a big vaguely-snowy wave coming out of it, but I like it.
- Gotta have iPhone 15 Pro, 16, or 16 Pro, unfortunately. Or an M-series iPad.

Much like many of us see no value in apple products.

Genmoji is a waste of space. The image generation is really bad (but then again, most of these platforms are). The writing tools are mediocre. About all that is moderately useful is that Siri seems a little better and processing commands.

If they want to start charging for this, I’m out.

If they want to start charging for this, I’m out.
I’m not sure why they would charge for it, most of it happens on-device.
- True, but the RnD ain’t cheap. And, if everyone else starts charging (as I am sure they eventually will), Apple will follow.

I was trying to generate ai images and it couldn’t handle anything …. asking Siri questions amounts to nothing … it has a cool animation and sound for when you summon it and that’s about all … it’s a fucking dud.

I appreciate the summaries on my notifications. Some of my people text a book every time.

They need to let us whitelist 2FA App notifications from summary, so there is no lag time. I have to wait 30 seconds, where it used to be instant. My friend turned it off and his notifications went back to being instant again.

Shock, I tell you. Absolutely shocked. S

For me the best new feature on macOS is the ability to natively put the temperature in the menu bar. You click on it, and it gives you some more info and from there can launch the full weather app.

It's a small addition and could have been there for a decade, but I like it a lot.

MacOS didn't have that before? That's impressive. Windows has had it for a long time, and KDE obviously does too, and with KDE you can put it anywhere. I can't understand why people still act like Apple products are premium.
- Yep. Apple was trying to get things OUT of the menu bar for a long time. I dunno why current leadership has changed their tune.
- Well you can install a menu bar app if you want. Just like you can with any other system. I don’t ever care about the weather so I want my menubar as clean as possible, so I use bartender to hide almost everything.
for checking the wheather i actually use Windows.

Is it worth the hype that Apple and cell carriers are throwing at it? Not really, but do I, as a user, enjoy a lot of the new features? For sure.
Double tap to type to Siri is great, and access to ChatGPT for answers Siri doesn’t know is much better than, “I couldn’t find the answer. Would you like me to search the internet?” And as a person with slight dyslexia and ADHD, Proofread is a fucking god send.

My only gripe is the lack of ChatGPT and search internet for answer options. I want to use both in various situations when Siri doesn’t get the answer directly.
- That’s a fair point.

it's just one big pile of meh. but then i dont even use siri, so i'm not really the target audiance for anthropomorphized chatbots.

It still needs to learn. I'm personally trying to opt out of it watching everything I do, will have to be some pretty serious benefits for me to revert.

How long does it take to learn? It should be able to scan all of my files locally and I should be able to search for songs by lyrics or images by description and metadata locally. It supposedly has GitHub copilot like functionality in xcode...

excluding comedy

EU: you guise tell me when you’ve got something decent

I really don’t get the advantage. It just feels like Siri with less.

My ex’s last name was pronounced worse after the upgrade too. It used to enunciate the T in the last name and then after spoke it like there was no T. Always bothered me when I would ask Siri to make a call to her.

It looks pretty? But beyond that, I’m not feeling any advantages like what ChatGPT or Copilot have.

I’m not feeling any advantages like what ChatGPT or Copilot have.
Unless you explicitly tell it to use ChatGPT, everything is done on device. That's an advantage for me.
- Oh really? I didn’t know that was a thing.
  So you tell Siri “Use ChatGPT” and then it switches over?
  I had asked Siri what it could do after the update and didn’t get much information on what new features there were or how to access them.

As the owner of a 13 Mini; what’s that?

We didn’t get anything at all from 18.1. There is literally nothing on my phone to tell me that it exists.

However, I do have it on both of my Macs, and have yet to do anything with it. I’m not in any hurry to bother either.

I just recently moved from 13 mini to 16, other than screen size you’re not missing much.
- I have a mini specifically because I didn’t want a surfboard for a phone.
18.1 has some minor things, but the big ones are in 18.2. You will probably still not use them, but until you update, you probably won't see them.
- No, Apple Intelligence simply does not exist on any iPhone below a 15 Pro.

I’m pretty smart myself, and I’m treated the same way. 😏

Good to see Apple or continuing in their vein of having the worst implementation of an assistant product.

Get it off! Get it off!!

they only added it to my device like yesterday but I can already tell it's just Siri with a different screen effect. the image generator is the least intuitive prompt I've seen yet.

I am interesting in AI stuff, but I do not want it controlled by some company, I'd like to run my own models.