PJ Vogt

So the AI that's on the phone is like, quote unquote, listening to my message, turning it into text so that when I send people long voice memos, they can actually skip them and just read it. And that's sort of new. That's new. Apple started offering these auto-transcriptions in their fall 2023 update, iOS 17.

And the fact that these transcriptions are AI-generated is important because, Alex pointed out, there have been issues with some of Apple's newly released AI features, particularly since their most recent update, which shipped one month before the first report of this Dave & Buster's anomaly, iOS 18.

And the fact that these transcriptions are AI-generated is important because, Alex pointed out, there have been issues with some of Apple's newly released AI features, particularly since their most recent update, which shipped one month before the first report of this Dave & Buster's anomaly, iOS 18.

And the fact that these transcriptions are AI-generated is important because, Alex pointed out, there have been issues with some of Apple's newly released AI features, particularly since their most recent update, which shipped one month before the first report of this Dave & Buster's anomaly, iOS 18.

Or it'll say, like, oftentimes I just get inaccurate ones where it will try to do an italicized summary of a text message or a headline, and it'll say something that sounds incredibly alarming. And then when I click through, I'm like, oh, no, the AI is just confused.

Or it'll say, like, oftentimes I just get inaccurate ones where it will try to do an italicized summary of a text message or a headline, and it'll say something that sounds incredibly alarming. And then when I click through, I'm like, oh, no, the AI is just confused.

Or it'll say, like, oftentimes I just get inaccurate ones where it will try to do an italicized summary of a text message or a headline, and it'll say something that sounds incredibly alarming. And then when I click through, I'm like, oh, no, the AI is just confused.

So this is where the ampersand comes in. The iPhone's AI model takes the audio of me saying Dave and Buster's and tries to turn it into a transcript that writes Dave and Buster's with an ampersand. But that breaks something. The iPhone perhaps thinks this ampersand represents here not human language, but a random misplaced bit of computer code.

So this is where the ampersand comes in. The iPhone's AI model takes the audio of me saying Dave and Buster's and tries to turn it into a transcript that writes Dave and Buster's with an ampersand. But that breaks something. The iPhone perhaps thinks this ampersand represents here not human language, but a random misplaced bit of computer code.

So this is where the ampersand comes in. The iPhone's AI model takes the audio of me saying Dave and Buster's and tries to turn it into a transcript that writes Dave and Buster's with an ampersand. But that breaks something. The iPhone perhaps thinks this ampersand represents here not human language, but a random misplaced bit of computer code.

Because ampersands mean one thing in human English and another thing in code, engineers usually indicate to the computer when an ampersand should be ignored.

Because ampersands mean one thing in human English and another thing in code, engineers usually indicate to the computer when an ampersand should be ignored.

Because ampersands mean one thing in human English and another thing in code, engineers usually indicate to the computer when an ampersand should be ignored.

This ampersand may have been unescaped. One of the most jaw-dropping scandals of 2025. But to understand why that unescaped ampersand could have fully crashed the audio message, that required further testing. Alex offered to try to get inside the iPhone's mind.

This ampersand may have been unescaped. One of the most jaw-dropping scandals of 2025. But to understand why that unescaped ampersand could have fully crashed the audio message, that required further testing. Alex offered to try to get inside the iPhone's mind.

This ampersand may have been unescaped. One of the most jaw-dropping scandals of 2025. But to understand why that unescaped ampersand could have fully crashed the audio message, that required further testing. Alex offered to try to get inside the iPhone's mind.

And when you say a test phone, it's just like an iPhone that you're purely using for this test.

And when you say a test phone, it's just like an iPhone that you're purely using for this test.

And when you say a test phone, it's just like an iPhone that you're purely using for this test.

We were screen-sharing, so I could see the software. On the top of the window was a spiky graph representing activity on the iPhone, almost like a heart rate. Beneath, illegible to me, the corresponding log entries for each action the phone had taken, the computer's notes on its own internal workings. Normally, these log entries are quickly deleted, but Alex's setup would capture them.