Although the Siri app refuses to summarize webpages, the intelligent assistant can do so from within Safari.

Similarly, it can summarise the content of YouTube videos from within the app – though the exact situation with both appears complex …

The Siri app refuses to summarize URLs

In the first developer beta, the Siri app would not summarise the content of a URL pasted into it. However, it would not explicitly refuse. This behavior changed in beta 2, with an explicit refusal.

A new section in Siri AI’s system prompt now says: “You cannot access content behind a URL. When a user provides a URL and asks you to summarize, read, or extract information from it, inform them that you cannot access web pages. Do not offer follow-up suggestions or workarounds.”

We speculated that this may be a deliberate decision on the company’s part in order to avoid robbing websites of visitors, which would make the web increasingly unsustainable over time.

Siri in Safari and YouTube will sometimes summarize

However, if you are inside the Safari app and ask Siri to “summarize this,” then it will do so at least some of the time. Other times, it will say it’s unable to do so.

It’s the same story inside the YouTube app, where Siri will sometimes summarise a video and other times say it is unable to do so.

9to5Mac’s Take

Given these differing behaviors, it’s not entirely clear what Apple intends the assistant to do in response to these requests. The fact that it’s a developer beta makes it harder still to differentiate intended behaviors from unexpected results, and we can expect further changes in future betas.

When we use the thumbs down feedback response, we can see a report which includes most of the sources used to answer the question. In the case of our own YouTube video, Siri has the 9to5Mac video channel as part of its world knowledge index, so it’s likely to be gathering the information from that. However, there are other occasions when it is very definitely examining the live webpage content – for example, reading a comment that has only just been posted.

We’ve reached out to Apple and will update with any response.

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Benjamin Mayo contributed to this piece. Image: 9to5Mac/Alexander Grey.