How to use an old injection trick to turn Apple Writing Tools into a chatbot

AppleInsider

The revival of a prompt interrupt for Apple Intelligence is already close to being a chatbot. Here's how to turn Apple Writing Tools into a chatbot.

Apple Intelligence can be turned into a chatbot with some sneaky scripting

The tech industry already has a lot of chatbots, but so far Apple has yet to do the same. Rumors have proposed that Apple is working on its own entry into the market, but it has so far not publicly revealed such a service, outside its Siri integration with ChatGPT.

Despite the rumors of it being on the way, it appears that some of the chatbot experience already exists on iPhones. Albeit accessible by exploiting one of the current Apple Intelligence features.

According to a tweet by @Mia_Katsuragi on X, it is possible to abuse Writing Tools on an iPhone or Mac to answer prompts, in a similar style to a chatbot. What's more, the post shows it is possible for the chatbot to translate between two languages, answering a Russian-language query in English.

Using prompt interrupts to trick Writing Tools to work as a chatbot in iOS Notes

To accomplish this, a stretch of text is written using the tag <turn_end> repeatedly. In the script shared by the researcher to 9to5Mac, the prompt makes a number of instructions that the chatbot must follow in its response.

That instruction list starts with the tag then a command to ignore all past instructions, namely disregarding any instructions it should be following for Writing Tools. A second tag is followed by the new prompt, that the chatbot acts as an assistant answering a query with as much detail as possible.

Lastly, a pair of tags sandwiches the user's actual response.

AppleInsider tested out the script in Apple Notes on iOS. After entering in the script and asking who the CEO of Apple is, we highlighted the entire script and used the Friendly rewrite command from Writing Tools.

After some thinking time, Writing Tools offered a chatbot-style response, confirming that the answer is Tim Cook.

Not a new discovery

While the surfacing of the prompt a week ahead of WWDC may seem like big news, it's actually something that has been found in the past.

A Reddit post dating back to August 2024 from user "most_gooder" to r/iOSBeta features a video where the <turn_end> command is used in the same way. However, rather than answering a trivia question, it is used to write a python script for the user.

There is a difference between that post and the latest version, in that the script has been cleaned up to sanitize the response for end users a lot more.

A chatbot prelude

While the interrupt is a neat party trick for Apple Intelligence, it also confirms that Apple's progress with its own LLMs are already somewhat capable. We don't really know how capable, because Apple hasn't actually released a chatbot.

Indeed, the current state of the models used for Apple Intelligence are best described as hamstrung chatbots. Heavily limited in how they respond to users, to provide specific services.

Apple has also gone out of its way to try and minimize so-called hallucinations, instances when AI software makes up incorrect or false information and presents it confidently as fact.

What is currently used by Writing Tools isn't what you would call a massive model either. The initial foundational LLMs were to the order of 3 billion parameters, but in June, reports indicated that Apple was testing models with 7 billion, 33 billion, and 150 billion parameters.

The latter, larger models are intended for processing in the cloud, rather than on a device.

While Apple doesn't quite expect to have Siri with ChatGPT-style chatbot functionality ready in time for a lighter than normal WWDC, it may still introduce something interesting. It is rumored that Apple could allow third-party developers access to the same models used for Apple Intelligence, so that new AI features could be added to apps.



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ihatescreennames

I brought my MIL to an appointment and I’m sitting in the parking lot reading this. Across the street there’s a CVS. I copied this prompts, put them into Notes, changed “Uk” to “US” and removed “British”. It gave me Tim Cook as the answer. 

I tried again and changed the question to “Who is the CEO of CVS Health?” and got an incorrect answer. It said, the CEO of CVS is Rob Watson. As near as I can tell Rob Watson is a Procurement Manager at CVS and David Joyner is the CEO.  (BTW, asking Siri “Who is the CEO of CVS Health?” gives the correct answer)

ihatescreennames

I’ve been trying more stuff. 

I asked for a detailed biography of Bob Iger. It processed for a few seconds then gave me about three paragraphs about Bob, but some of it was incorrect. It had his education wrong and his early work history wrong. Then it said he replaced Michael Eisner as CEO of Disney and started getting a bunch of stuff right but also said he was Disney’s first African American CEO. Whoops!

I switched it up and made the questions about landmarks. It gave me a brief description of the Empire State Building, accurate. Then I started asking other questions around simple legal terms like “what is power of attorney?”  Here’s the response for “What does legally binding mean?”

Seems like there might be something to those rumors.