Autocorrect can be ‘ducking’ annoying, but we’ll miss its accidental poetry when it’s gone - The Guardian

Anyone who has spent any time in the world of Instagram wellness will be familiar with the notion that gratitude can ward off the blues.

It’s said that people who take the time to write down what they are grateful for – usually part of a practice called journaling – worry less and generally feel better about their lives. It’s not something I do often, but feeling inspired earlier I gave it a go on my iPhone, typing out on the Notes app: “Today I am grateful to live in a moment where ducking [sic] hell is still auto cucumber [sic] to something far more beautiful.”

Of course, what ended up on the page isn’t exactly what I had written. Autocorrect has been responsible for this kind of accidental poetry for more than a decade – but it may soon be a thing of the past. Apple has announced an AI-powered upgrade to its autocorrect functionality that will drastically improve the system, learning to predict words that the user repeatedly employs better than ever – including swear words. “In those moments where you just want to type a ducking word, well, the keyboard will learn it, too,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s software chief.

Personally, I will miss the autocorrect failures. It’s not that I don’t see the value of well-placed profanity, nor understand that a machine is supposed to do what you tell it. And it’s not like I haven’t screamed when my furious message has changed before my eyes – always just as I hit send – reducing my impassioned outpourings about “Brexit” to trivial comments on “Breakfast”, leaving me wondering if Apple isn’t taking the “poss”.

But some of the best things in life come from error or imperfection, and that is where autocorrect’s magic lies. Sometimes it offers up truths: when I text my friends about having an “Aperol after work” it reverts to the appropriate “a peril after work” (accurate given some of the hangovers). Other times, it gives political reminders: I want to “meditate on it” is snidely transformed into “menstruate on it” (immediately rousing the inner feminist from any slumber). The best is always the laughs: like the story I heard about poor epi pen users who just wanted to talk about their medication without the conversation referencing an “epic penis”. But there’s also value in seeing the limits of technology so frequently – to see its seams – before our expected descent into a scary AI-driven world, where we no longer know where technology begins and ends, and arguably in turn, where humans do either.

Luckily, we still have plenty of other quirks in our text-based lives to enjoy (for now anyway). The unfathomable thumbs up reply (is it a yes or is it passive aggression?). The gratuitous misuse of ellipses (it’s supposed to represent an omission of words for impact! What is the impact of “Ok… I’ll come and collect you…” other than communicating that you are in fact a murderer?).

And we must protect, at all costs, the wonderfully absurd world of intergenerational miscommunication. My friend’s mum still uses FML wrongly (FML stands for Fuck My Life and is used to denote exasperation) because my friend didn’t want to admit to swearing so told her it meant “From Mum with Love”. Few things are as funny as seeing a message from her reading: “Nan coming over later, FML”. Or how my father-in-law eschews punctuation entirely. On one occasion, his two separate comments – one on football and another about what he’d been up to with the garden renovation – made for alarming reading: a single text message that simply said “bad match result I bought a small axe”.

If I could place autocorrect as it is now into a museum, I would, so that future generations might revel in this innocent, hilarious blip in time. I’ll be enjoying it while I can, until the new iOS forces its demise. As it happens, that same update comes with a new app, Journal, which ostensibly makes it easier for people to log their gratitudes. I already know what my first entry will be…

• Coco Khan is commissioning editor for Guardian B2B and a writer. She is co-host of the politics podcast Pod Save the UK

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2023-06-07 14:54:00Z
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