'Ultimate superficiality': experts cast doubt on tech that could soften the blow of grumpy texts

Is that you? Or is it the bot? Linguists have said the nuance and character of human language are at risk, as Apple becomes the latest tech firm to launch artificial intelligence tools that can rewrite texts and emails to make users sound more friendly or professional.

- Robert Booth

Apple's new features, available in the UK as of yesterday, are said to be able to lighten a grumpy missive or turn arcane language into something a five-year-old could understand.

But the potential boon for time-pressed people who struggle for the right writing tone has brought warnings that such tone-shifting technology could devalue and flatten human communication. One language expert described the automatic systems as "the ultimate superficiality".

Apple's developers have been training its AI model on unspecified bodies of text. About half of all phones sold in the UK are made by Apple, and its AI launch comes after Google and Microsoft released their own tools, Gemini and Copilot, to help users adjust their writing tone.

Last week Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook, said of the writing tools: "It's still coming from you. It's your thoughts and your perspective." He compared it to a spreadsheet doing sums automatically rather than punching them into a calculator, or using a word processor instead of typing.

In the US, where the Apple Intelligence system has been live for weeks, users reported that the tools can on occasion make you "come off sounding stuffy". Another new feature that summarizes emails and texts has turned the most emotional exchanges into robotic bullet points.