Apple Faces Criticism Over AI-Generated News Headline Summaries

[HobeSoundDarryl]

on purpose?

What's your evidence of that?

The exhibit shows the false information. I’m not saying this is nefarious “on purpose” by design but that mistakes in how A.I. is processing for this feature is creating genuine “fake news.”

The irony is that some sling the “fake news’ tag to try to undermine or redirect the truth. Now if we face daily doses of “Dewey Defeats Truman” even by mistake, A.I. can actually succeed at undermining trust in ALL news… including the truthful, fact-checked kind from real journalists.

Once the masses are conditioned to believe nothing they read, the game becomes who do you trust to tell you the truth. And that can lead to dark ages-like disasters, endless conspiracy spin, superstition revivals, etc.

Real journalist making an obvious mistake like this triggers a formal retraction, apology, possibly gets sued, and journalist may lose their job and professional credibility. A.I. bot writer gets no admission of wrongdoing yet (even though this is obviously wrong information), has no job to lose, has no risk to their income to somewhat self-police themselves, has little reputation on the line (as a nameless & faceless algorithm), and- perhaps worst of all- attributes the wrong info to a reputable news entity (BBC)… undermining real journalism there. Who should post the retraction here: the BBC who did NOT write this? Or Apple? If someone sues over some "fake news" like this, who should be sued here: the BBC or Apple? Imagine the permutations of where these kinds of errors can run.

And I doubt we would see the human journalist have people leaping to defend with lines like “they are new” and “will get better.” Get the story right, be sure about the facts or don’t run the story. Instead, this is run the mistaken headline, redirect the source to highly reputable brands, say nothing about the A.I. mistake, and hide behind “the tech is brand new and will get better at getting the stuff it writes right.” Even if we want to accept that (and why do we want to accept false information?) and live with doubts about anything it writes, how long has it taken Siri to get smarter? 😱 I know, let’s ask Siri! 😉

 

[wanha]

The exhibit shows the false information. I’m not saying this is nefarious “on purpose” by design but that mistakes in how A.I. is processing for this feature is creating genuine “fake news.”

So not on purpose then, just terrible design or implementation

 

[DailySlow]

This crap’s just not ready for prime time. I still don’t understand the urge to push out these AI features few are actually asking for.

Welcome to the AI beta focus group. Check me as confirmed shut off on my Macs.

 

[WarmWinterHat]

Best thing I ever did was turn off all notifications and badges for Linked In. Every hour it would be pinging me with dross.

Now I open the app every couple of weeks and my feed is actually relevant and worth reading. Try it.

Same, except I've disabled notifications for everything except messages and calls.

AI isn’t perfect, but I like that feature. It will improve. If I want to find out more I click through. No need to have the mentality of throw the baby out with the bath water.

Get back to me when it does. I'm not beta-testing features I didn't want or ask for, and I don't have the tolerance for fiddling around with tech.

Also, my sig:

 

[russell_314]

Was the source article well written? Could be a case of junk in, junk out. Would be ironic if it’s from an AI written article.

The legacy is extremely fearful of being replaced. I find it entertaining that they’re threatened by AI.

 

[Remy149]

They needed something to market the iPhone 16 series since they couldn’t find much of anything else.

We just going to ignore that tech and financial pundits haven’t framed AI as the most important thing right now. Any tech company not talking about AI is in danger of stock imploding. This is more about pleasing investors then trying to convince consumers

 

[Dawn of Individual Merit]

(...)

It will get better with time. We need features like being able to point your camera at a card with appointment dates and having it automatically add them to your calender. The tech for this has been there for two years, but not running on a small device with a tiny LLM - and not hooked into Apple's APIs so it can actually do it.

(...)

The tech for that has been there for quite a while longer, and it has nothing to do with LLMs.

I would advise all proponents of what the marketing departments call "AI" to actually look at the technologies behind all those implementations, and then re-assess whether an LLM really is the solution to the use cases they're envisioning.

LLMs as a technology are interesting on an academic level, but so far everyone who tried to push for adaption of them in any user-facing feature either had monetary incentive to do so (corporate PR and tech pundits trying to generate buzz), or simply did not understand what they were talking about.

 

[Arran]

…Asking Apple to remove this feature is censorship in my opinion…

If Apple practiced a bit of self-censorship (like they used to) and either killed bad products or waited until they were ready, then none of us consumers would have to waste time over this. I’d thank them.

Saying a lousy product is a “beta” is a cop out.

 

[epox999]

all the AI stuff is disabled on my 15 pro, and it's going to stay disabled, just total trend chasing, who asked for this?

 

[skottichan]

Another reason why I feel LLM's need to stay out of creative spaces.

 

[dannyyankou]

You can choose which apps it generates summaries for

Using AI to summarize news headlines is probably not the best idea.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

The legacy is extremely fearful of being replaced. I find it entertaining that they’re threatened by AI.

They’re threatened by A.I. because A.I. can work for free and humans who do actual journalism work have bills to pay. When A.I. comes for our jobs, let’s be sure we exhibit no worry… that we are 'entertained' at it replacing our jobs too. Our bills will apparently be magically paid just like this professions. Empathy: what a concept!

White collar professionals had better be learning new skills very hard for A.I. to replicate. And don't automatically assume that is blue collar skills as the leap from white collar brain work to blue collar muscle work is only making A.I. in robotics dig that new trench or septic tank... like delivering packages to addresses... or driving that taxi. But again, all professions that A.I. can replace will still magically be able to pay their bills too.

Don't worry. It will be 'entertaining' to displace biological workers with free artificial workers. What can go wrong?

 

[Abazigal]

Headlines really do have a way of making it seem like Apple is facing massive backlash over this when in reality, it’s just a small number of users and organisations.

 

[ForkHandles]

Was the source article well written? Could be a case of junk in, junk out. Would be ironic if it’s from an AI written article.

The BBC is the Premier news service in the UK. It’s the only news service I know of in the world that’s required, by law, to be impartial, balanced and factually correct.
The consequences of not being is being pilloried by government and by all of the billionaires that own other News outlets.

 

[stevemiller]

You can choose which apps it generates summaries for

Using AI to summarize news headlines is probably not the best idea.

“Obviously you should only sometimes want potentially incorrect information”

 

[orbital~debris]

Was the source article well written? Could be a case of junk in, junk out. Would be ironic if it’s from an AI written article.

BBC News is a prestigious news gathering organisation not known for 'junk'. Their articles are usually very high quality.

 

[orbital~debris]

Thanks for letting me know this can be turned off.

Did you see the 'onboarding' feature after upgrading to whichever version of iOS 18 brought Apple Intelligence features to where on Earth you live?

It describes the notification summarisation feature and allows you to apply it to all notifications or just certain types. So you could leave it on for messages, say, and off for another kind of notification.

 

[Plutonius]

AI is taking input from the news sources. If something is wrong with the news source, the AI will be wrong.

 

[ThailandToo]

This crap’s just not ready for prime time. I still don’t understand the urge to push out these AI features few are actually asking for.

Apple is so far behind in AI. It was a joke for them to introduce AI when they did. They spent years working on ridiculous projects as Tim wanted a jackpot and they missed the thing they do best - software integration to sell more iPhones-ecosystem products and subscription services.

 

[PowerButton]

Skynet suddenly seems plausible. 🤔
Just don’t let Apple AI anywhere near cyber-physical systems or autonomous weapons systems 😏

 

[uptownjimmy]

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

Updated to iOS 18.2? Then you may have received this notification (image credit: BBC News)​

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

Mangione in fact remains under maximum security at Huntingdon State Correctional Institution in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, after having been charged with first-degree murder in the killing of healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thompson in New York.

The BBC has confirmed that it filed a complaint with Apple regarding the headline incident. The RSF has since argued that summaries of the type prove that "generative AI services are still too immature to produce reliable information for the public."

Vincent Berthier, head of RSF's technology and journalism desk, said that "AIs are probability machines, and facts can't be decided by a roll of the dice." He called the automated production of false information "a danger to the public's right to reliable information."

This isn't an isolated incident, either. The New York Times reportedly experienced a similar issue when Apple Intelligence incorrectly summarized an article about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, creating a notification claiming he had been arrested when the original article discussed an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court.

Apple's AI feature aims to reduce notification overload by condensing alerts into brief summaries, and is currently available on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 models, and select iPads and Macs running the latest operating system versions. The summarization feature is enabled by default, but users can manually disable it through their device settings.

• iOS Notification Summaries Lost in Translation? How to Turn Them Off

Apple has not yet commented on the controversy or indicated whether it plans to modify or remove the feature.

(Via BBC News.)

Article Link: Apple Faces Criticism Over AI-Generated News Headline Summaries

There will be lawsuits over all this "AI" nonsense and the ridiculous rot that it spits out, and "AI" will, of course, fade into memory like all the other silly fads and false promises and studiously hedged bets.

 

[Mr_Ed]

The tech for that has been there for quite a while longer, and it has nothing to do with LLMs.

I would advise all proponents of what the marketing departments call "AI" to actually look at the technologies behind all those implementations, and then re-assess whether an LLM really is the solution to the use cases they're envisioning.

LLMs as a technology are interesting on an academic level, but so far everyone who tried to push for adaption of them in any user-facing feature either had monetary incentive to do so (corporate PR and tech pundits trying to generate buzz), or simply did not understand what they were talking about.

Agree, but this assumes they are first identifying use cases in need of addressing or improvement, then identifying solutions. So much of what we’ve seen in the tech sector in general of late feels like they are doing it backwards. Identify “cool” tech/buzzword first, then figure out how to force feed it to customers.

 

[Mr_Ed]

AI is taking input from the news sources. If something is wrong with the news source, the AI will be wrong.

Yes, but that is clearly NOT what happened here.

 

[AlumaMac]

AI is taking input from the news sources. If something is wrong with the news source, the AI will be wrong.

Apparently you didnt read the story….Apple ‘AI’ is creating false summaries from factual news articles.

 

[victorvictoria]

Same thing when Maps rolled out. It got better, but by then, everyone was using Google Maps (and they're still better than Apple Maps).