Apple has been caught in hot water after its new generative AI software produced a factually incorrect headline that was discovered by the BBC.
The BBC recently published a report stating it officially complained to Apple after an Apple Intelligence-generated headline of a BBC news story that was pushed out to iPhones last week contained misinformation. The headline stated Luigi Mangione, the man who was arrested for the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thomson, shot himself. The AI-powered summary was discovered by the BBC, which contacted Apple to raise the concern and "fix the problem".
Notably, Apple's AI that generated the summary was otherwise correct in the other information it provided, such as South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol having his office raided by police, and the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria. However, the BBC isn't the only publication to have suffered from Apple's AI spitting out headlines that are factually incorrect, as three articles on different topics from the New York Times were distributed in one notification, and one of those headlines stated the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu was "arrested".
The AI summarized a newspaper report stating that the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, not that he had been arrested. Apple has touted the new AI feature is designed to reduce the time spent interacting with notifications, giving a user more time to interact with notifications that are meaningful. Notably, these AI summaries are only being pushed out to iPhones using the iOS 18.1 system update or later, which is available on all iPhone 16 devices, as well as the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max.
