AI summaries don’t always get the details right
After a series of misfires caused by bad Apple Intelligence notification summaries, Apple has decided to limit the feature in specific situations.
Apple Intelligence rolled out to the public in October 2024, and since its debut, it’s been somewhat of a mixed bag. While many people enjoy features like AI writing tools, features like the notification summaries aren’t as well received.
Specifically, it seems Apple Intelligence doesn’t quite get nuanced language. This has resulted in many summaries of news stories being factually incorrect.
As a result, Apple has chosen to disable news and entertainment notification summaries in the third round of iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS Sequoia 15.3 betas. Apple is currently working on improvements and plans to make the summaries available once more in a future update.
Additionally, Apple is taking further steps to ensure that when a user enables Notification summaries, the user is aware that this is a beta feature that could produce unexpected results. It has also updated the style for summarized notifications to further distinguish it from other notifications by displaying summaries with italicized text.
Users also will have the ability to toggle notification summaries on or off from the Lock Screen. Settings for notification summaries are set per app.
News outlets, such as BBC News, are quick to condemn Apple Intelligence notification summaries as it could lead followers to distrust a publication based on botched summaries.
