Apple is ready to launch its AI features soon. They are testing the Apple Intelligence features in developers’ previews currently for iPhones and Macs. Recently, a Reddit user shared some of the backend prompts they are using for macOS.
Highlights:
- Apple Intelligence features are currently in developer betas stage for iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1.
- A Reddit User shared some backend prompts including: “Do not hallucinate”.
- Apple Intelligence is going to be released to the public in the upcoming iOS 18 update.
Apple Intelligence’s Backend Prompts are Interesting
The main purpose of Apple Intelligence is “to help users write, express themselves and get things done effortlessly“. It introduces new writing tools and lets users create expressive images, unique Genmojis and custom memory movies.
Genmoji are customized emojis are created according to the prompt entered by the user. This feature can also convert rough sketches into interactive images. Also, You can make custom memory movies in the photos app and even search through your photos easily.
There are also Priority notifications that will now be displayed on the top in the notifications bar and AI even summarizes the content so that you can scan them faster.
Apple Intelligence is going to be built into all the Apple devices like iPhone, iPad and Mac with privacy and security being the top priority as usual.
However, when some of the users dug deep into the Apple Intelligence model on Sequoia, they found some very surprising things. At first glance, looks like these features that we have discussed above are being implemented by just passing some prompts to the LLM.
These are pre-prompts, that are like default instructions given to the chatbot, and they can’t be changed.
An ML researcher, named Cyril Zakka, has posted on X about this:
Digging through the new 3B Apple Intelligence Model on Sequoia and found some interesting things. The base model itself seems to be around 1.7GB. and most of the new features like priority notifications, text-image, localization, guardrails etc. are just prompts to the LLM. pic.twitter.com/sqZGesFv0C
— Cyril Zakka, MD (@cyrilzakka) July 30, 2024
Take a look at one of the screenshots that we found to be extremely interesting in his tweet:
Let us break down the prompt. The first few lines say “You are an assistant which helps the user respond to their emails. Please draft a concise and natural reply based on the provided reply snippet. Please limit the answer to within 50 words.”
Many observations can be made based on these: One of the users pointed out in a reply to the original tweet that the first line “You are a helpful assistant …” feels like they are telling a living machine to do what it needs to. The repeated use of the word “please” in the consequent lines makes people wonder why Apple is requesting the model so politely again and again.
The remaining lines of the prompt read: “Do not hallucinate. Do not make up factual information. Preserve the input mail tone.” These lines make us wonder how a model can stop hallucinating just because it is being prompted to not hallucinate.
A Reddit user with the username Devanxd200 has also posted some screenshots of backend prompts:
People were surprised at the prompt to “present your output in JSON format” which might be not how AI is supposed to work if we have to tell it how to do things in absolute. But it might also be that they are been cautious about supporting function calling.
Some other interesting prompts include: “Do not hallucinate” and “Do not make up factual information“. While the latter one makes some sense, the previous one looks quite interesting. People are discussing whether it was necessary and will it solve that problem.
One of the screenshots looked like a prompt for the message summarization feature:
Also, another user has expressed some concerns in her blog about one of the screenshots which is an image-filtering prompt. Look at the prompt:
He feels that people will easily trick the system into producing offensive content. We are yet to receive any official reaction from the company regarding this issue.
Conclusion
No matter what, Apple Intelligence will be a huge game changer in the future. Apple aims to market these features extensively to increase the sales of its new products. Just to remind in the end, Apple Intelligence is going to be released to the public as a part of the latest iOS 18.
