Apple has halted the practice of showing Apple Intelligence-informed summaries from news apps in the latest iOS 18 beta, following a spate of concerning inaccuracies.
The iOS 18.3 third developer beta released today is no longer showing the summaries for news and entertainment apps, 9to5Mac has spotted.
Apple has said the notifications will be restored “with a future software update” so it seems company is removing the feature from the firing line while teaching Apple Intelligence to stop messing up.
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The BBC in particular has been hard hit by the malfunctioning AI, which, in summarising headlines has mischaracterised some stories and published entirely incorrect information for others. Apple has previously promised a software update would do a better job of explaining to users that the AI-based summaries could contain errors.
However, in the case of news and education apps responsible for spreading journalistic reports from credible media institutions, such errors were always going to be met with scorn. Apple seems to have decided discretion is the better part of valour for now.
Elsewhere in the beta, Apple is making the promised changes pertaining to these summaries. Firstly there’ll be an overt indication that the feature is a beta, the company will also enable users to disable the summaries on a per-app basis. The text for summaries will now be identifiable by italics, while users will also be warned the summaries “may contain errors.”
In recent weeks, Apple has copped plenty of flack for the feature, most notably in-mid December when it informed BBC News readers: “Luigi Mangione shoots himself.” Mangione is the suspect charged with the fatal shooting of the United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York in December. Mangione did not shoot himself, did not attempt to, and is currently in custody with police in the United States. Just last week, in admittedly lower stakes, it crowned the teenage sensation Luke Littler the PDC World Darts Champion before the final had taken place.
In a separate incident sent to BBC Sport app users, Apple Intelligence falsely proclaimed “Brazilian tennis player, Rafael Nadal, comes out as gay.” The story itself was about a different player entirely.
This feature was an insult to good journalism
Dropping this feature until it can be relied upon is the right call, but it should have been withdrawn as soon as the mistakes began happening.
In an environment where misinformation is rampant and public trust in media institutions is fading, here was a feature taking reliable reporting and fashioning unreliable reporting – and the organisation had no say in the matter if it wanted to furnish readers with breaking news alerts. It was unacceptable.
These notification summaries could be a handy feature, but Apple just cannot bring them back for news apps until Apple Intelligence has a 100% success rate in surmising the multiple headlines without publishing falsehoods.
