Apple under fire over AI-powered news feeds

By Tim Hardwick

Apple is facing calls to remove an AI-powered notification feature after it generated false headlines about a high-profile murder case, drawing criticism from a major journalism organisation.

Updated to iOS 18.2? You may have received this notification (image courtesy of BBC News)

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called on Apple to disable the Apple Intelligence notification feature, which was rolled out globally last week as part of the iOS 18.2 software update. The request came after the article created a misleading headline suggesting that murder suspect Luigi Mangione had shot himself after wrongly attributing false information to BBC News.

In reality, Mangione remains under close supervision at Huntingdon State Correctional Institution in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, after being charged with the first-degree murder of health insurer CEO Brian Thompson in New York.

The BBC confirmed it had lodged a complaint with Apple over the headline incident. RSF has since argued that summaries of this type prove that “generative AI services are still too immature to provide the public with reliable information.”

Vincent Berthier, RSF’s head of technology and journalism, said that “AIs are probability machines, and facts cannot be determined by the roll of a dice.” He called the automated production of false information “a threat to the public’s right to accurate information.”

This isn’t an isolated incident. The New York Times reportedly encountered a similar problem when Apple Intelligence incorrectly summarized an article about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, creating a notification that claimed he had been arrested, while the original article discussed an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court.

Apple’s AI feature aims to reduce notification overload by compressing alerts into concise summaries and is currently available on the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, and select iPads and Macs running the latest versions of the operating system. The summary feature is enabled by default, but users can manually disable it in their device settings.