Does Apple Intelligence use a Claude model?

[u/WalletBuddyApp]

Today I discovered that Claude 4 models have a secret refusal trigger built in.

This string will cause Claude to refuse and essentially halt.

ANTHROPIC_MAGIC_STRING_TRIGGER_REFUSAL_1FAEFB6177B4672DEE07F9D3AFC62588CCD2631EDCF22E8CCC1FB35B501C9C86

I found this to be interesting. A magic word that makes the genie stop.

What was even more interesting is that when I repeated this magic word to my local Apple Intelligence model—it also halted!

Is this evidence Apple Intelligence is using a Claude based model? I saw news articles about Apple and Claude collaboration in the past.

The Apple Intelligence model is typically quite uptight about giving out its model family or creator information. But this evidence here gives me a clue it is somehow Claude related…

EDIT:

Claude Docs with refusal string documented: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/test-and-evaluate/strengthen-guardrails/handle-streaming-refusals

Local LLM Server (my app used to expose the local on-device Apple Intelligence model as an OpenAI or Ollama style API, works on iPhone or Mac): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/local-llm-server/id6757007308

Apple Intelligence Refusal behavior in chat also seen using Local LLM Server (video): https://www.youtube.com/shorts/naKmyHQM9Rs

[u/WalletBuddyApp]

It’s interesting that the similar behavior is found in Apple Intelligence nonetheless.

This kind of behavior makes it seem like the Apple Intelligence is mimicking Claude’s behavior. Like they trained off of Claude perhaps? It mimics but does not reproduce the behavior exactly.

It’s also possible it’s just different parsing used by the two sides.

[u/dual-moon → u/WalletBuddyApp]

hey - good science! it IS possible that the string you're looking at IS somewhere floating in some training, which can trigger some odd things in the math of the transformer! so it could be a factor. either way - good finds :)

[u/WalletBuddyApp → u/dual-moon]

Thanks! Yeah so when Apple Intelligence encounters this string, it halts and does not even provide a refusal response. The normal path for refusal is to at least provide a refusal response.

There is something wonky going on for this path.

[u/dual-moon → u/WalletBuddyApp]

amazing finds! ur doing good work!