Apple is facing criticism after a new iPhone feature showed misleading headlines. According to BBC News, a notification from Apple’s new AI-powered feature said Luigi Mangione had shot himself. This happened earlier this week on iPhones. The notification was part of Apple Intelligence, a new feature that uses artificial intelligence to summarise news for you.
Apple’s AI-powered feature sends out grouped notifications
The iPhone’s new Apple Intelligence feature had a problem with a BBC News AI summary. The AI-powered summary shows that BBC News had published an article claiming Luigi Mangione, the man arrested following the murder of healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thompson in New York, had shot himself. He hadn’t. There was no report of him doing so. The BBC contacted Apple to raise the issue and asked them to fix it.
Apple Intelligence is meant to summarise and group notifications together. Apple says it reduces the number of interruptions from ongoing notifications so you can focus on the important updates. But this new feature isn’t without problems and users are already reporting incorrect notifications.
The BBC responded quickly. “BBC News is the most trusted news media in the world,” a spokesperson said. “It is essential to us that our audiences can trust any information or journalism published in our name and that includes notifications.” Apple hasn’t commented on the specific issue or why the notification was wrong.
Why did Apple’s AI get it wrong?
Apple’s new notification system uses AI to combine multiple news stories into one notification. This is meant to keep you informed without being interrupted by too many updates. But AI sometimes gets the stories wrong. In this case, it mixed up the news and said Luigi Mangione had shot himself.
This isn’t the first time Apple’s AI-powered notification system has made a mistake. On November 21, The New York Times news also incorrectly appeared claiming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested, according to a post on Bluesky by Ken Schwencke. Like the BBC issue, this was not true and caused confusion.
Experts warn of AI news summary risks
Experts are worried about the rise of AI for news summaries. Prof Petros Iosifidis, a professor in media policy at City University in London, said it was embarrassing for Apple. He also warned that there is a real danger of spreading disinformation. These problems show we need to verify the news before we trust it especially when AI is involved.
