Apple turns off AI notifications on iPhones due to absurd and scary headlines

Apple has temporarily disabled the Notification Summaries feature, which uses Apple Intelligence to generate short news excerpts, after numerous complaints from users and journalists about fake headlines.

The media, and BBC News in particular, has suffered the most from the new feature. The first complaints about AI distorting facts in reports appeared back in December, for example, about Luigi Mangione, accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, having shot himself.

In some cases, Apple's artificial intelligence copes with the task well, but, as numerous studies have shown, more often its result is very funny. On Reddit, a separate subforum, r/AppleIntelligenceFail, has even appeared, which is dedicated to fake alerts and headlines.

For example, one user's mother told him about a very tiring hike that “almost killed her” – the AI ​​in the report told him about a “suicide attempt.” And The Verge editor was surprised to see an invitation from the Writers Guild of America to “look at his old ass” on his phone.

In response to numerous complaints, Apple has decided to disable the controversial feature, but so far only in the beta version of iOS 18.3. In addition, Apple will allow you to enable/disable news summaries for each individual application right on the lock screen.

In a recent interview, Apple CEO Tim Cook explained the company's lag in the AI ​​race by the fact that it is important for Cupertino to be the best, not the first. At the same time, Apple employees believe that the company is at least 2 years behind in the AI ​​race. There is an opinion that the company made mistakes by focusing on AR/VR when the emphasis should have been on AI.