Apple has temporarily suspended its Apple Intelligence notification summaries feature for select applications following criticism over inaccuracies in summarizing news headlines. The artificial intelligence tool came under fire after providing misleading summaries, including a notable case involving a notification from The Washington Post. Just last month, the BBC also brought attention to incorrect summaries generated by the feature in iOS 18.
iOS 18.3 Halts Notification Summaries for News and Entertainment Apps
The tech giant introduced various features within its Apple Intelligence framework with the iOS 18.1 update, including the notification summaries feature, designed to distill the content of notifications for user convenience. This opt-in feature allows users to select which apps will provide summarized notifications.
Since its launch, the feature has been criticized for producing flawed summaries related to news apps. Notably, the BBC reached out to Apple in December 2024 after discovering inaccuracies in AI-generated summaries, one of which wrongly asserted that Luigi Mangione had taken his own life after being convicted of murdering the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.
In another instance, a user on Bluesky shared a screenshot where the AI inaccurately summarized a New York Times article, claiming that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested while the actual notification indicated that a warrant for his arrest had been issued by the International Criminal Court.
Despite these problematic incidents, Apple did not immediately retract the feature or address the inaccuracies. The most recent reporting error occurred on Wednesday when the feature misrepresented a push notification from The Washington Post.
Washington Post technology columnist Geoffrey Fowler commented on the issue, stating, “These mangled summaries were amusing on low-stakes text messages, but more dangerous on alerts from news apps. One time it incorrectly alerted me that Donald Trump had endorsed Tim Walz for president.”
The problem of presenting erroneous summaries is magnified by the way Apple displays these AI-generated notifications. Currently, notifications do not clearly indicate when AI is involved in creating summaries, apart from a discreet icon.
According to 9to5Mac, the upcoming iOS 18.3 update will enhance the notification summaries by highlighting summarized text in italics. Furthermore, the AI summaries for news and entertainment apps will be disabled by default in this update.
Users will gain the ability to disable notification summaries for specific apps directly from the lock screen or notification center starting with iOS 18.3 beta 3. Additionally, Apple is advising users that these summaries “may contain errors” within the Settings app.
Reports suggest that Apple is committed to refining the feature and plans to reactivate notification summaries for the affected app categories in a forthcoming software update.
