iPhone AI news alerts halted after errors

Apple has discontinued a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature that had drawn criticism and complaints for repeated errors in its summaries of news headlines.

The tech giant was facing mounting pressure to pull the service, which sent notifications that appeared to come from within news organizations’ apps.

An Apple spokesperson said: “We are working on improvements and will make them available in a future software update.”

Reporters Without Borders, a journalism organisation, said this showed the dangers of rushing to roll out new features.

“Innovation should never come at the expense of citizens’ right to reliable information,” she said in a statement.

Vincent Berthier of Reporters Without Borders added: “This feature should not be rolled out again so that there is no risk of publishing inaccurate headlines.”

The BBC was among the groups that complained About the featurefollowing an alert generated by Apple’s artificial intelligence Some readers lied That Luigi Mangione, the man accused Whoever killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson shot himself.

The feature also inaccurately summarized headlines from sky news, The New York Times and The Washington Post, according to reports by journalists and others on social media.

“There is a great necessity [for tech firms] “To be the first to launch new features,” said Jonathan Bright, Head of Public Services AI at the Alan Turing Institute.

He added that hallucinations — where an AI model makes things up — are “a real concern,” and “so far companies don’t have a way to systematically guarantee that AI models will never hallucinate, other than human oversight.”

He added: “Besides misleading the public, such hallucinations could further damage trust in the media.”

It was the media and press groups The company was forced to retreat Warning that the feature was not ready and that errors generated by artificial intelligence increased problems of misinformation and decreased trust in news.

The BBC complained to Apple in December, but it did not respond until January, when it promised a software update that would explain the role of artificial intelligence in creating the summaries, which were optional and only available to readers with the latest iPhones.

This is what prompted A Another wave of criticism That the tech giant wasn’t going far enough.

Apple has now decided to disable the feature entirely for news and entertainment apps.

“With the latest software betas for iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS Sequoia 15.3, Notification Summaries for the News and Entertainment category will be temporarily unavailable,” an Apple spokesperson said.

For other apps, AI-generated app alert summaries will appear using italic text, the company said.

A BBC spokesperson said: “We are pleased that Apple has listened to our concerns and has temporarily turned off the news summary feature.”

“We look forward to working constructively with them on the next steps. Our priority is the accuracy of the news we provide to the public which is essential to building and maintaining trust.”

Apple is generally strong with its products and does not often respond to criticism.

This simple statement from the tech giant speaks to how damaging mistakes made by its much-hyped new AI feature can be.

Not only was this inadvertently spreading misleading information by producing inaccurate summaries of news stories, but it was also damaging the reputation of news organizations such as the BBC, whose lifeblood is its credibility, by displaying false headlines next to them. Its slogans.

Not a great look for the newly launched service.

AI developers have always said that technology tends to “hallucinate” (make things up) and all AI chatbots carry a disclaimer saying that the information you provide should be double-checked.

But increasing importance is being given to AI-generated content – ​​including the provision of summaries At the top of search engines – This in itself means that it is reliable.

Even Apple, with all its financial muscle and technology development experience, has now publicly demonstrated that this has not yet happened.

It’s also interesting that the last bug, which preceded Apple’s plan change, was an AI summary Content from The Washington Post, As reported by their technology columnist Jeffrey Fowler.

The news outlet is owned by someone Apple CEO Tim Cook knows well: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.