AI doesn’t belong in journaling
A blank page is supposed to be ‘inconvenient.’ | Image: The Verge, Getty Images
In July 2023, I deleted the Day One journaling app from my phone and laptop. It was perhaps the best thing I've done as a lifelong diarist.
The decision was prompted by Apple announcing its Journal app at WWDC that year. In that keynote, Apple said it would use "on-device machine learning" to provide prompts based on the content in your iPhone - things like contacts, photos, music, workouts, podcasts, and location data. The idea gave me the ick. Mainly because the app was described as a riff on the Memories feature in the Photos app, which at the time had "intelligently" resurfaced a photo of my mother's open casket.
I had flashbacks to t …