Use Writing Tools with Apple Intelligence on Mac

Latte And Now For That Latte
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With Sequoia 15.2 out for a couple of weeks now, I was wondering if anyone has incorporated Writing Tools into their workflow. Is it useful or is it cheating?
Apple Intelligence Writing Tools.

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That’s not mutually exclusive. (Kind of like entering a bank with a gun in your hand.)

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I don’t think using it as an adjunct (editing, assisting with rephrasing) is necessarily cheating. PWA uses AI, and as with all those apps, it’s up to you to decide if you accept their suggestions, uses them as a starting point to rephrase, or reject.

The greater concern is the rise in the number of ‘authors’ rushing almost entirely AI generated rubbish on to Amazon. That’s cheating (and a few other words likely to get me told off by the admins)

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I don’t think using assistive AI is cheating; I’ve used Apple Intelligence’s Writing Tools to proofread only; a couple of times or so to rewrite (but I’ve not always accepted the suggested revision.)

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I noticed Apple Intelligence (sic) was made available here in the UK with macOS 15.2, but I’ve not downloaded it.

I mean, I’m curious, but so far I’ve been underwhelmed with the reality of the LLMs I’ve tried. I’m also sceptical of Apple’s ability in this area, especially considering Siri, which, admittedly, I’ve not tried for a couple of years; though when I did, all it seemed useful for was setting a timer.

All that aside, I wouldn’t consider it cheating to use an LLM for assistance any more than I would a spellchecker – auto-correction remains so laughably bad, I’m surprised anyone sticks with it.

Why not cheating? Well, LLMs aren’t going to create. That’s not what they were designed to do, nor something they are capable of doing. Sure, they might provide some interesting prompts, but that’s about their limit. But then everything we experience is a potential prompt, so I see it no differently.

Things might – and probably will - change at some point. But for now, they are just an interesting plaything.

At the end of the day, we are writers, and the words that end up on the page are our choices, however we come by them.

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