Yesterday Apple dropped iOS 18.3 beta 3, two days after similar betas for watchOS and tvOS were released. We now have a likely explanation for the delay. Apple has been working to refine the Notification Summary feature, on platforms like iOS, which support Apple Intelligence. This update comes after more than one high-profile botched AI-generated summaries, which resulted in what appeared to be false and/or misleading headlines from organizations like BBC News.
In a testament to how egregious these notifications were, Apple has made some significant changes to the way that these summaries work and how they are presented to the user. Watch our full explainer video, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more.
The issue with Notification Summaries
As a part of its iOS 18.1 rollout, which included phase one of Apple Intelligence, Apple released the Notification Summaries feature. Notification Summaries attempt to concisely summarize multiple notifications from a single source into an glanceable, and easily-digestible alert. A lot of times, these summaries prove to not only be handy, but accurate in representing the contents of the full batch of notifications.
Video walkthrough
Subscribe to 9to5Mac on YouTube for more videos
Like everything related to AI, it’s not perfect, and mistakes happen. However, it’s one thing to receive an amalgamation of texts from a family member or friend. Even if the contents of the summarized notification isn’t accurate, it can often be humorous. It’s an entirely different issue when the notification summary condenses info from a news organization, resulting in misleading or sometimes downright false summaries.
In BBC News’ case, this is what occurred when the Apple Intelligence-assisted summary feature pushed this wildly false notification to users:
That’s a serious issue, and could easily damage the reputation of the originating source. Needless to say, BBC News wasn’t happy, and called out Apple about the misleading summary. Notably, BBC News did not share the original headlines that were used to generate the notification summary, but it obviously wasn’t anything like what was generated by the AI.
This isn’t the first time this issue has happened, and it won’t be the last. However, Apple is taking steps, as it promised a few weeks ago, to minimize potential issues going forward.
Clear indication of beta status
The first thing that Apple wants users to know is that Notification Summaries is a beta feature. Whereas this may have not been as clear in previous versions of iOS, all Apple Intelligence features, thus far, are in beta. When enabling notification summaries in the latest iOS 18.3 beta, Apple has made this clearer.
A warning
Not only is the beta status of Apple Intelligence made more clear, iOS 18.3 will also warn users that these notification summaries “may contain errors.” Again, public awareness of the limitations of AI-generated headlines is a good thing.
More power to disable notification summaries
Additionally, Apple is providing users with more power to disable summaries for an individual app directly. This could always be done via Settings → Notifications, but now you can do so directly from Notification Center or from the Lock Screen by swiping left on the notification → Options → Turn Off Summaries.
Italicized text
Summaries on the Lock Screen will now be displayed with italicized text. This may seem like a small change, but it will make it clear, at a glance, that what’s being displayed is AI-generated, thus distinguishing it from regular notifications.
Temporarily disabled categories
The summaries that might end up causing the biggest issue are generated from apps in the News & Entertainment category, like The BBC. Thus, apps within this category will have their notification summaries disabled indefinitely. Apple says that a future software update will re-enable summaries for apps that fall within this category as it works to refine the experience.
Other features
There are not many new features in iOS 18.3 beta 3 other than what’s been discussed above. There is one thing that we discovered, a new AXFeatureOverrideServer component. From what we can discern, this seems to be a feature that will allow a user to toggle accessibility features on or off temporarily. This could be just a developer tool, or it may be a hint at an upcoming additional to iOS accessibility.
In my previous iOS Decoded post, which covered iOS 18.3 beta 2, I walked through quite a few new under-the-hood updates that point to several upcoming iOS features. Be sure to watch that full episode below.
9to5Mac’s Take
I’ve been using Notifications Summaries from day one, and it’s quickly become one of my most appreciated features of Apple Intelligence. However, I could see, as could many others, that this feature was a ticking time bomb of sorts when it came to false or misleading headlines like this. I’ve received numerous, mostly humorous summaries, that totally throw off the context of the real batch of notifications. That’s fine when it’s just between me and my friends and we can all laugh about it. It’s a much more serious issue when it’s from a news organization, and perhaps millions of people receive the misleading summary.
It’s great that Apple is addressing this, but it seems like an unforced error. It was just a matter of time before something like this happened.
What do you think? Sound off down below in the comments with your thoughts on the matter.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
