Apple has temporarily stopped a news summary feature of Apple Intelligence, the company’s flagship artificial intelligence (AI) service, after several instances of erroneous news summaries being shown to users.
Apple’s decision to suspend the service came after a complaint made by the BBC. Apple’s service had generated a news summary branded with the BBC’s logo which falsely stated that Luigi Mangione (the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson) had shot himself.
This was not the only false news alert generated by Apple’s AI to carry the BBC’s logo. Others included a report that tennis player Rafael Nadal had come out as gay, and one announcing the champion of the PDC World Darts final before the match had taken place.
An Apple spokesperson told the BBC that “notification summaries for the News & Entertainment category will be temporarily unavailable” after the next software update. “We are working on improvements and will make them available in a future software update.” They also confirmed that there would be a formatting change to AI-generated summaries, with any app notifications summarised by AI appearing in italicized text.
Headlines from other news organizations had also been erroneously summarised by Apple’s AI, including a New York Times story that the AI summarised to say that the prime minister of Isreal, Benjamin Netanyahu, had been arrested.
What was Apple Intelligence meant to be doing?
Apple Intelligence was introduced to iPhones in December, promising a whole host of new features.
A key offering was that your iPhone would now summarize long notifications, as well as condense multiple notifications into one short summary.
This image demonstrates one of the errors made by Apple’s summary-generating AI. In its attempt to summarise several headlines into one condensed notification, it misses nuance and creates incorrect information.
“We’re pleased that Apple has listened to our concerns and is pausing the summarisation feature for news,” a BBC spokesperson said.
“We look forward to working with them constructively on the next steps. Our priority is the accuracy of the news we deliver to audiences which is essential to building and maintaining trust.”
The UK’s National Union of Journalists has also expressed concern that the erroneous summaries pose a threat to journalism and has urged Apple to remove the feature entirely.
Featured image credit: Grok