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Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram block use of Apple Intelligence

Writing Tools are not available in Facebook on iOS, nor in any of Meta's other apps.

Last updated

All Meta apps for the iPhone have been updated to take out the option to use the Writing Tools in Apple Intelligence.

It's unlikely that Meta will ever reveal the reasons behind its decision — even if it's happy to spill other firms' confidential details — but it is now blocking the use of Writing Tools. It's not clear when the change was made, but at time of writing, Writing Tools are unavailable across Facebook, Threads, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

Or at least they are on the iPhone and the iPad, although Instagram does not yet have a native iPadOS app. It's still, of course, possible to use Apple Intelligence Writing Tools in a browser. Whether on the Mac, iPhone, or iPad, accessing Meta services online can't prevent Apple Intelligence's Writing Tools from being provided.

However, according to Apple's developer documentation, apps for iOS and iPadOS have to choose to enable the feature. Based on comments in the Apple support forums, Meta may have initially supported the service, but began removing support in December 2024.

It's perhaps a sign of how little used Apple's Writing Tools are that the change wasn't noticed for months. It was then seemingly first spotted by the Sorcererhat Tech blog.

Meta does have its own AI services, though they do not currently offer a similar feature to Apple's Writing Tools. Nonetheless, it appears that in mid-2024, Apple may have been in talks with Meta about integrating its AI into iOS 18, as it has with ChatGPT, and might yet with Google Gemini.

10 Comments

mattinoz 10 Years · 2610 comments

It might just be they are really bad at app development.
they have a long history of bloated horrible and ugly software 

4 Likes · 0 Dislikes
ForumPost 7 Years · 116 comments

They already put Meta AI on WhatsApp search since probably 2-3 updates ago. I haven’t touch it but seems like it can do many things than just search contents on your chats history 

snookie 16 Years · 161 comments

mattinoz said:
It might just be they are really bad at app development.
they have a long history of bloated horrible and ugly software 

Get serious.  They removed it which means it was working.  This is obviously on purpose.  The remedy with all thgins facebook is don’t use their products.

10 Likes · 0 Dislikes
dws-2 23 Years · 280 comments

There's a lot I dislike about meta and facebook, but I fully support removing AI writing. I don't want to read generic AI writing. I want to read things in my friends' own words.

2 Likes · 3 Dislikes
mpantone 19 Years · 2419 comments

dws-2 said:
There's a lot I dislike about meta and facebook, but I fully support removing AI writing. I don't want to read generic AI writing. I want to read things in my friends' own words.

A couple of comments about this.

First and foremost, not everyone in your Facebook feed is your friend. There are tons of advertisers, news agencies, whatever else is being promoted by Meta. Writing tools (AI or not) help all of these people.

Second, your friends could easily use other writing tools (again AI or not) provided by Meta, Apple or another third party to alter their writing. We already have built-in spell checking and rudimentary grammar correction on mobile, computers, etc. for a long time. What you are reading isn't just raw output from your friends or anyone else.

Should your friends use AI-assisted writing tools? It's really their choice. Again, if they are really motivated, they can use someone else's AI writing assistant to generate their Facebook comments and just cut-and-paste.

However, AI writing tools don't make anyone smart. It just reduces some of the gruntwork and makes people with extremely poor writing skills *sound* like they know how to write. But if you talk to them, they'll still use the same words they always use, have the same analytical abilities, etc.

What AI-assisted writing tools really gives to the user is free time. What you do with that extra time is what might possibly change your life. If you use that extra time to learn more about something that requires critical thinking, yes, AI offers a path to increased knowledge. If you choose to use that extra time watching Tik Toks, well, maybe you're going to end up dumber than before. Or maybe you use that extra time to exercise, work in your garden, bake cookies, play with your kids, etc.

If some of those activities are what your friends are doing with their newly available extra time, well, maybe it's not such a bad thing. But in the end, it will be their choice since AI-assisted writing tools aren't going away. They are here to stay whether they be offered by Meta, Apple, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, whoever.

Anyhow Meta wants you to use their AI tools because they can sell your activity to the highest bidder. That's their business model. They really don't want you to spend your time elsewhere using someone else's AI tools and just cutting-and-pasting the final result. Moreover they can use your interactions with their AI to train their models. Using ChatGPT or Apple Intelligence doesn't make Meta Llama any better.

This should be obvious but clearly it is not to some people on the Internet.

13 Likes · 0 Dislikes