Hallucinating iOS Capabilities

I decided this morning that I wanted to defeat the Jump to Recipe anti-pattern, so I asked Claude:

As you know, many recipes on the Internet are filled with all manner of SEO bait: photos, videos, long, textual descriptions. These recipes generally have a “jump to recipe” button at the top of the page, that lets you go directly to the recipe.

I’m interested in building an iOS shortcut which I could activate with a URL, which would go to the recipe page, and perhaps using an LLM, extract the recipe, and create a note, using the native Notes app, with just the essential recipe details and ingredients. Is that possible?

Claude dutifully responded with a creative, straightforward suggestion as to how to proceed. Before building it out, though, I asked Claude a supplemental question:

Does the iOS/macOS don’t have any native functionality related to recipe recipes that I should know about?

To my surprise, Claude responded with a description of functionality I didn’t know about:

Safari Recipe Detection

Safari can automatically detect recipes on websites and display them in a clean format:

• When viewing a recipe page in Safari, look for the “aA” button in the address bar
• Tap it and you may see a “Show Reader” option
• Sometimes there’s a “View Recipe” button that shows just the recipe in a clean overlay

Reminders App Recipe Support

The Reminders app has built-in recipe card functionality:

• You can save recipes directly to Reminders
• They appear as special recipe cards with ingredients and instructions
• You can check off ingredients as you shop
• Check off steps as you cook

I tried these new features out, but I saw no evidence of them actually existing, so I called Claude on its shit:

Are you sure you’re not hallucinating this functionality in Safari? I’ve tried it with several popular recipe sites, and although I can see the Show Reader, I don’t see anything recipe-specific.

It turns out that Claude made the whole thing up. 

It replied:

You’re absolutely right to call me out - I apologize for that confusion. I was indeed being overconfident about Safari’s recipe-specific features.

This isn’t something unique to Claude, of course: all LLMs make stuff up. Claude has an ever-present sentence to remind us of this—”Claude is AI and can make mistakes. Please double-check responses”—that links to a page with a more detailed explanation of why.

Instances like this are a good reminder of the truth of that “can make mistakes” statement, especially when asking more urgent questions, like “I’ve just swallowed a whole coconut, is that ok?” or “my penis fell off, is that normal?”¹, when LLMs’ propensity to provide compliant, hopeful answers is more life-threatening than a bum steer about recipe support.

1. For the record, Claude responded with an appropriate instruction to call emergency services when I raised either concern.