Brief summary
Apple has promised to change one of its most problematic features.
This comes after problems with major brands such as the New York Times and the BBC.
It’s hard not to notice the plethora of AIs surrounding us right now. It’s a real buzzword in the tech industry: all kinds of products now offer AI-powered features.
When it comes to iPhone and others Apple products that take the form Apple Intelligence. After a relatively muted start, the recent iOS 18.2 update saw that a wider range of functions appeared for users.
However, things were not going entirely smoothly for the Cupertino company. The BBC recently became last company to file a complaint about the notification summary feature.
This uses artificial intelligence to create a single summary of multiple notifications in one dashboard. Basically, this could combine everything from an app like BBC News and give you small snippets of the headline without cluttering up the notification bar.
In practice, things are much more problematic. The BBC’s complaint came after a report said Luigi Mangione had shot himself. This was confirmed to be not only untrue, but also contrary to what was said in the article itself.
The broadcaster has since also flagged mistakes about the World Darts Championship winner ahead of the final and suggested that Spanish tennis player Rafael Nadal had come out as gay.
Now Apple has promised make changes. The matter has not yet reached the point of removing this feature, which many have called for. Instead, they announced that a feature update would be coming in the coming weeks.
However, it is important to note that this update will not necessarily change the algorithm behind this feature. An Apple spokesperson told the BBC: “A software update coming in the coming weeks will further clarify when text displayed is a summary provided by Apple Intelligence.”
This suggests the change will simply indicate when something is created by Apple AI, rather than attempting to correct any misleading language. This is an interesting choice by the brand – essentially, it decided to admit the mistakes of its feature rather than correct them.
It remains to be seen whether this will prove to be a sufficient remedy and we will certainly be monitoring developments closely.