Apple Intelligence notification summaries are, in my view, one of the early killer AI features. But they’re not without their flaws, as the BBC has continued highlighting via several new examples today. Here are the latest Apple Intelligence errors with news alerts.
BBC News highlights ongoing Apple Intelligence errors
Last month, the BBC publicly aired its grievances with Apple over its new AI notification summary feature.
Added in iOS 18.1, the feature allows Apple Intelligence to summarize a notification’s info rather than providing the actual content as written.
Apple Intelligence is currently available in beta, so Apple says you should expect mistakes and report them so the system can continually be improved.
The BBC is taking that message to heart. The December example involved AI claiming, via a summarized BBC News alert, that Luigi Mangione had shot himself. This was entirely untrue.
Now today, the BBC’s Imran Rahman-Jones has published several more examples of Apple Intelligence errors its users have reported.
A news summary from Apple falsely claimed darts player Luke Littler won the PDC World Championship – before he has even played in the final.
The incorrect summary was written by artificial intelligence (AI) and is based on a BBC story about Littler winning the tournament semi-final on Thursday night.
Within hours, another AI notification summary falsely told some BBC Sport app users that Tennis great Rafael Nadal had come out as gay.
There are undoubtedly countless more examples users have seen, so I wouldn’t be surprised if stories like this continue to become more common.
9to5Mac’s Take
Notification summaries are prone to mistakes for all kinds of apps, but understandably they can be especially problematic when summarizing breaking news.
Summarizing the contents of what is already a summary seems a bit unnecessary in the first place, so I wonder if Apple’s ultimate remedy will be disabling AI summaries for news apps by default.
Do you think these Apple Intelligence errors are a serious issue? How have summaries been in your experience? Let us know in the comments.
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