After facing pressure to remove its AI news summaries after multiple reports of false headlines, Apple plans to tweak how the feature works.
Apple will update notification summaries to highlight when they are generated using Apple Intelligence.
Notification summaries rolled out with iOS 18.2
One key feature of Apple Intelligence is using AI to summarize unread notifications. The feature rolled out in beta as part of iOS 18.2 on December 11. Theoretically, this would allow you to review all your important and unread notifications at a glance. However, the system as it stands now is far from perfect.
In late December 2024, Apple Intelligence created a false headline from BBC News saying murder suspect Luigi Mangione shot himself. However, this was not the case, leading to a huge uproar among the press fraternity. Publications and news organizations heavily criticized Apple and asked the company to remove the feature altogether.
More recently, notification summaries generated a bogus AI summary indicating Luke Littler won the PDC World Darts Championship, even though the competition had not yet finished. There have been several such reports of notification summaries generating incorrect headlines.
Apple’s fix won’t reduce incorrect headlines and errors
Apple issued a statement Monday to the BBC about the inaccurate news summaries. Cupertino said it will update notification summaries to “further clarify” when they have been generated using Apple Intelligence, indicating they might not always be accurate. This change will roll out in the coming weeks.
Below is the company’s statement in full:
Apple Intelligence features are in beta and we are continuously making improvements with the help of user feedback. A software update in the coming weeks will further clarify when the text being displayed is summarization provided by Apple Intelligence. We encourage users to report a concern if they view an unexpected notification summary.
A fix to make Apple Intelligence generate more accurate summaries is not simple. An LLM model generates the summaries, which Apple keeps improving with training. So, there’s no “fix” in Apple’s current approach. The model should improve with time, however, thereby increasing the accuracy of the generated notification summaries.
If you find notification summaries troublesome because of incorrect headlines, you might want to consider turning off the feature.
