With the release of new Apple Intelligence features in the company's mobile and desktop operating systems, the Siri digital assistant can now read and summarize messages. While the focus of many reviews and online discussion has been around its varying degrees of success -- ranging from the comical to the journalistically incorrect -- the issue of privacy recently bubbled up.

The summarization feature, part of Apple's approach to artificial intelligence, can happen in apps and with notifications. That has rung alarm bells for those who rely on privacy-focused apps for communications. What happens when that feature works with messages the user would hope would remain private?

A text-based meme circulating earlier this month on social media and in forums warned that Siri could "see" normally encrypted exchanges in Signal, a messaging app favored by whistleblowers, journalists and their sources for its strict privacy. As is often the case with memes, it got a lot of things wrong, including incorrect instructions on how to disable the summarization feature. But its existence highlights the growing tension around AI and how it handles personal information, and invites scrutiny on how Apple Intelligence works.

I first ran across the meme in a friend's Facebook post. Replies included a lot of "thank you for sharing this, I didn't know!" sentiments. Most of the responses were unquestioning. But I saw several inaccuracies in it, so I started checking it out.

"Apple Intelligence can now read Signal messages on new iPhones. If you have a newer iPhone, 15 or 16, and you have downloaded ios 18.1, please make sure you either disable Apple Artificial Intelligence under settings, or go under Siri/ AI and ensure it is not enabled for Signal. If you do not, it will scan your Signal messages and read the content. To do so, navigate to Settings " Siri " scroll down to Apps " Signal " turn off 'Learn from this app' and the other two settings."

And here's what's wrong or suspect in the post:

The settings are for a feature called Siri Suggestions, in which the digital assistant can recommend using apps at certain times or under specific circumstances. It first appeared in iOS 9 in 2015, and appears in various forms on current Apple devices.

For example, there's a Siri Suggestions widget that can be set up on a device's home screen. Let's say you sign on to Signal (or any other app) at a certain time each day. Eventually Siri learns that you use that app at that time and will suggest it when you pick up your phone. It learns from calendar items, location and other usage patterns. But it does not read your messages.

You can indeed instruct Apple Intelligence not to do summaries on a per-app basis, but strangely enough it's not in the Apple Intelligence / Siri section of Settings. Instead, head to Notifications and tap on Summarize Notifications. Here you'll see a long list of apps that produce notifications and accompanying slider buttons that let you disable summaries.

But before you do, there are some things you should know about how the summarization process works.

Yes, Siri can "see" messages that produce notifications and uses Apple Intelligence to generate summaries. The premise is that a summary of the whole message can be more useful than just the first line or two - and from what I've seen so far, that's true about 60% of the time.

But this is done securely and only on your device. Apple has made a big deal out of the privacy of its approach to AI, and the summarization process takes place completely on your phone. AI takes a lot of computing power, which is why Apple Intelligence is only available on the more powerful Pro models of the15 line and all of the new iPhone 16 devices. These devices have 8 gigabytes of memory, the minimum required to handle Apple Intelligence.

That said, there are instances in which a task may need more muscle than a phone can provide. In those cases, Apple does send information over the internet to servers it operates. The connection is encrypted, and the servers use the same processors and security protocols as the phones themselves. After the task is complete and the results sent back in encrypted form to the requesting device, the data is deleted. Apple has published a paper on the approach, called Private Cloud Compute, and invites security researchers to study and verify its privacy.

Some tidbits from Apple: Summaries are applied only to messages that are 200 characters or longer in length, and at this point, developers do not have the ability to opt-out of allowing Apple Intelligence summarizations.

For most people, the concern about summarizations of messages from a communications app with a privacy focus - which can include Meta's WhatsApp or Telegram, among others - is overblown. Just as the messages you're reading in Signal and other apps are only visible on your phone, so are the summaries. But for those who remain concerned, you can indeed turn them off. And now you have the correct instructions for doing so.