Apple’s notification summaries are the worst game of telephone ever

When Apple first rolled out its AI-powered notification summaries as part of iOS 18, I admit I was excited. I tend to disappear in group chats during the day — usually because I’m staying productive — which means I often come back to quite the stack of notifications that I have to read through. So, for my iPhone to sort through the mess and bring back a one-sentence summary sounded like a dream come true. As soon as it launched, I opted in.

And, as it turns out, Apple Intelligence does summarize my notifications — or at least it tries to. By trying to condense possibly dozens of messages into one single sentence, it has to pick and choose what context matters. It’s as if I were playing a game of telephone with friends, only the message I’m waiting for is hundreds of words long. Here’s what’s going wrong and what Apple has promised to do about it.