Creating summaries seems to be something everyone wants to do with AI, and Apple Intelligence is ready to do the same. You can have your emails, messages, and even notifications from third-party apps summarized. Some of these features can be helpful, like when the Mail app flags an email that seems urgent in its summary — something I wouldn’t have seen if I just glanced through the massive collection of emails. But most of the time, I just swipe through the summary and dive into all the notifications.
Speaking of which, Safari has a built-in summary feature, but you have to put the web page into Reader mode. It’s things like this that make it difficult to read. find These smart features and remember that they exist. At least, I was able to summarize them. A story of 11,000 words and capture the essence when I didn’t have time to sit down and read it. (Sorry.) I’ll forgive you if you summarize this review.
By far the most useful Apple Intelligence features for me as a journalist who attends several briefings a month are the new transcription tools in the Notes, Voice Memos, and even the Phone app. Tap the record button in Voice Memos and Notes and the apps will transcribe the conversations in real time! If you’re on a phone call, tap the record button and after both parties receive the notification, it will start recording the call and you’ll receive a transcript saved in your Notes app.
In any case, it depends greatly on the quality of the microphone of the person on the other end. Either way, it is certainly better than having no transcription at all. It is a shame that there are no labels for speakers, as in Google Recorder AppYou also can’t search these recordings to find a specific quote. (Technically, you can do that if you add the transcript to your note in the Notes app, but you can’t jump to that part of the audio recording once you find it.)
The Photos app is also getting an infusion of Apple Intelligence, and the highlight here is the Clean Up feature. As with Google’s Pixel phones that introduced Magic Eraser over three years ago, you can now remove unwanted objects in the background of your iPhone photos. This works pretty well in my experience, though I’m a little surprised Apple gives you so much freedom to erase. anythingI completely erased my eye from existence in a selfie. I erased all my fingers from my hand. (Google’s feature doesn’t allow you to erase parts of a person’s face.)
Next, I deleted my mug, which was in front of my face when I went to take a sip, and Clean Up attempted to generate the rest of my face that was previously hidden with some horrible results. (For what it’s worth, I tried this on the Pixel 9 and the results were just as bad, though Google did (Give me more options.) As my Slack coworker said, “They both look like they were trained on pictures of Bugs Bunny.”