Apple Intelligence mistakenly summarized funeral email as "critically ill," user says

A grieving iPhone user says Apple’s recently launched AI feature delivered a painful mix-up this week by summarizing an email about a relative’s funeral arrangements as “critically ill.” The user, who goes by the username stevejj, explained in a post on r/iphone that they had reluctantly re-enabled Apple Intelligence after a routine update. While searching for funeral details in their inbox, the feature generated a summary suggesting their relative was “critically ill” rather than deceased.

“My relative hadn’t undied,” stevejj wrote. “This time you are going to stay dead,” they added, vowing to disable the tool permanently. The post quickly gained traction, drawing over 2,100 upvotes and hundreds of comments criticizing AI’s role in handling personal communications.

Other Reddit users echoed frustrations with what they see as a wave of half-baked AI integrations. dissected_gossamer, a top commenter, called the current AI trend “a major case of the Emperor’s New Clothes,” arguing companies are “solving made-up baby problems nobody was actually having.” Another user, TheYoungLung, mocked the push for features like summarizing news headlines, quipping, “Summarize my news headline that is already a summary of the actual news!”

This isn’t the first time AI errors have made headlines. Last year, Google’s Gemini chatbot faced backlash for generating historically inaccurate images, while ChatGPT was caught inventing medical advice in some cases. So if it wasn’t already clear, AI can’t be blindly trusted at the moment, especially since we already know how frequently AI hallucinates.

Apple Intelligence, launched earlier this year, promises to streamline tasks like email sorting and drafting replies. But users like stevejj say its mistakes carry real emotional weight. The funeral email blunder follows reports of other quirks, such as the tool shortening lengthy messages into incomplete bullet points or mislabeling calendar events. 

Apple has not publicly addressed the funeral email incident. For now, stevejj and others say they’ll stick to reading — and grieving — without algorithmic help. As the Reddit post’s comments show, the line between innovation and intrusion remains blurry. These unfortunate mishaps are probably a big reason why Apple has drastically slowed down it’s push for the revamped Siri experience. The company likely doesn’t want to risk such experiences happening on a wider scale. But for some, like stevejj, the damage is already done.