Apple AI Writing Tools Struggle with Swears, Controversy

It has been observed that Apple AI writing tools struggle with processing swears and controversial topics, highlighting challenges in handling sensitive content

Last month, Apple released the iOS 18.1 developer beta, which provided users with their initial experience with Apple Intelligence features.

One of the new always-available services in this update is Writing Tools, which enables you to reformat or rewrite text using Apple’s AI models.

However, the tool will display a message informing you that the quality of AI-generated suggestions may be subpar when addressing specific subjects.

When it is necessary to modify text, Apple Intelligence can be invoked from virtually any location within the system.

However, a warning will appear when you attempt to rewrite a paragraph or sentence that contains profanity, such as “s—” and “bastard.”

The warning states that “Writing Tools was not designed to handle this type of content,” a header text will indicate that the rewriting quality may vary.

This warning is not solely triggered by profanity. This warning will also be invoked when the terms “drugs,” “killing,” or “murder” are mentioned.

Despite the warning that Apple Intelligence displays, it continues to provide sentence suggestions when you employ a word or phrase that it has not been trained on.

At one point during the testing process, I substituted “shy” with “crappy” to disable the warning. The AI tool responded with the same suggestion as before.

We have requested additional information from Apple regarding the topics for which the writing tools are not educated to provide recommendations. The story will be revised upon receipt of a response from the company.

Apple is likely preventing any controversy by prohibiting examining specific words, topics, and tones when its AI is rewriting sentences.

Apple Intelligence-powered writing tools are not designed to produce new content from inception, in any case. Nevertheless, Apple intends to issue a warning to individuals when AI is examining these terms.

Apple required several years to eliminate a restriction on profanity from the autocorrect suggestions of the keyboard. Apple ultimately implemented an autocorrect feature that recognizes your profanities with iOS 17 last year.

Apple may be exercising caution to prevent regulators from attributing its actions to the problematic content with Apple Intelligence.