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Maybe this is a stupid question, but why are summaries needed for app notifications? Aren’t the notifications typically written as short bursts of text that fit within the size constraints of the notification box (similar to a headline)?

Here are 3 of my recent app notifications (NOT summarized):

1.Apple TV app: “Severance: Free Episode - Watch the series premiere of this mind-blowing sensation.”
2.X/Twitter app: “Bill Simmons - If this is actually true, Kraft should sell the team.”
3.Apple Health app: “Sleep Goal Update; Good job hitting your sleep goal. Getting enough sleep can help you have a better day.”

Why would I need any of these summarized?

EDIT: Reason077 (below) explained the idea of summarizing multiple notifications from the same app (my mistake). Now this makes sense.
 
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Maybe this is a stupid question, but why are summaries needed for app notifications? Aren’t the notifications typically written as short bursts of text that fit within the size constraints of the notification box (similar to a headline)?

Here are 3 of my recent app notifications (NOT summarized):

1.Apple TV app: “Severance: Free Episode - Watch the series premiere of this mind-blowing sensation”
2.X/Twitter app: “Bill Simmons - If this is actually true, Kraft should sell the team.”
3.Apple Health app: “Sleep Goal Update; Good job hitting your sleep goal. Getting enough sleep can help you have a better day.”

Maybe someone can explain why I would need any of these summarized?

I think the idea is to summarise large numbers of notifications down to a short couple of sentences so you don't have to read all of them.
 
yeah Apple Intelligence is what is threatening the trust in news companies, is definitely not their slanted and often outright lies. And it’s most certainly not the intelligence agencies pushing propaganda through them. Nope it’s some basic headline summaries that’ll be the death of news.
 
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In theory this would be really useful to reverse the rise of clickbait headlines and quickly show the user the (usually underwhelming) one line summary of the story that the author/publisher made you read through 2 pages of waffle (and a ton of ads) to get to.

Headline: “Fans saddened to learn about Michael Jordan”

“Michael Jordan was a basketball player…(insert fifteen paragraph biography here)

Conclusion - MJ has knee pain.
 


Apple is working on an update for Apple Intelligence that will cut down on confusion caused by inaccurate summaries of news headlines, Apple told BBC News. In a statement, Apple said software coming soon will clarify when notifications have been summarized by Apple Intelligence.

bbc-news-apple-intelligence-summaries-clean-1.jpg


The statement comes following a BBC News complaint over a pair of false notification headlines generated by Apple Intelligence on Friday. One notification claimed Luke Littler won a darts championship before the tournament had even begun, and another falsely suggested former tennis player Rafael Nadal had come out as gay. BBC News called on Apple to take action because the ongoing Apple Intelligence issue threatens consumer trust in news organizations.

Available on compatible devices in iOS 18.1 and later, Apple Intelligence notification summaries are designed to group multiple notifications from the same app together, providing a one-sentence overview of the content. These short summaries can cause problems when AI pulls the wrong details from news stories.

There have been several prior events where Apple Intelligence provided incorrect details from incoming news app notifications. In November, Apple Intelligence suggested Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested, incorrectly interpreting a story from The New York Times. Last month, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) urged Apple to disable the Apple Intelligence notification feature after a misleading headline suggesting murder suspect Luigi Mangione had shot himself. RSF said that "generative AI services are still too immature to produce reliable information for the public."

Apple Intelligence notification summaries are an opt-in feature and they can be disabled.

Article Link: Apple Intelligence Update Will Add Clarification to Prevent Fake Headline Confusion

The BBC writes clickbait headlines and includes sensationalist language in their articles which confuse people and AIs alike.

They should fix their content, including testing it with AI technology to ensure that their intent is unambiguous. They should also be compelled to disclose the source content whenever making claims of this nature.
 
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What is the point of summarizing something that is already summarized?
AI summarizes the stack of notifications. If I have a half dozen from the BBC, I want a summary of all of them.

Unfortunately, BBC writers often write clickbait headlines and notifications containing sensationalist language that is easily misunderstood by both humans and AIs. For example, “shot himself in the foot with his choice of legal team.”

Language like that does not belong in news alerts.
 
It will definitely take some time for Apple Intelligence to improve. Along with an option to turn it off on an app by app basis, this seems like a good option. The current symbol while summarizing notifications is not very clearly separated from the rest of the content. Expecting this to change by the time 18.4 update is rolled out.
 
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I for one actually like the summaries feature. It has made one or two mistakes so far but said mistakes are easy to ignore. Since you can tap on the stacked notifications and read further. To me, BBC is just being overactive about it.
 
The arrogance of Apple (and some other tech companies) knows no bounds. Here they are, deliberately lying, and then saying "we'll do something about it in the next few weeks". If the much-maligned print media did something as blatant as this, they would face, and lose, a court case.

As others have said, this "feature" should be disabled totally now.
 
On a related issue, I managed to turn off the annoying, and sometimes misleading, AI-generated search results in Google using a custom rule in AdGuard for Safari. Not only does it get rid of the AI nonsense, my search results load much faster too!
I solved that issue before it even became an issue, I have been using Duck Duck go for years. While it does have something called duck assist, it is not shoved in your face, but I have noticed they now have something called chat, but it is only an icon., Why would I want to chat with my computer? Saying that, may get more sense out of it than I do with some people
 
Where is the innovation in that?
No, the real Apple way is to push the boundaries. Plenty of alternatives if you are not into that kind of thing.

The alternative is just to turn it off. It's my phone, not Apple's.

I don't personally need, want, or care about AI, from Apple or otherwise.
 
Interesting "Minority Report" result: Apple Intelligence reports the tennis winner before he wins the tournament. AI is proving to better at weather forecasting vs. current SOTA systems.
Not really, Apple Weather is so unreliable, it is a joke.

I ride a bike to work and my desk doesn't have a direct view out of the window - I have daylight, but an oblique angle out the window, where it is hard to see if it is raining. Usually it will be raining outside and Apple Weather says that there is 0% chance of rain and that it isn't currently raining... I've pretty much given up on it and generally get up and walk to the window, to see whether I need to put on my rain gear...

WÖW weather is showing light rain and high winds (60km/h) outside, Apple weather says 0% chance of rain and winds up to 21km/h... It is currently raining and the wind is trying to uproot nearby trees...

We won't get Apple Intelligence here until the spring, at the earliest. At the moment, I don't really have FOMO, given how badly it is failing. But that needs to be put into context, a lot of the other AI services I've used aren't any better.

I was watching a YouTube video with my wife at the weekend and it was auto-translating into German (she doesn't speak any English). It was a recipe and it was using dates (the fruit), the translation started going on about "pureeing the appointments"...

I keep trying different AI tools, but always come away disappointed, because the error rate is just too high to use them for anything serious at the moment. It is the same as the translation tools, I worked in a translation office for a while and they did everything by hand, because things like Google Translate were simply useless at doing a good job at translation, let alone a professional job.

Before I worked at the translation office, I had to translate an instruction manual to German in a hurry, I put it into Google Translate, hoping to save time...

"Do not open the case, high voltage inside" -> Gehäuse öffnen, Starkstrom drinnen (open the case, high voltage inside)
"Do not open the case, no user serviceable parts inside" -> Gehäuse öffnen, nichts drin (open the case, nothing inside)

GT now get this right, because I actually too the time to put the correction into it. But it still regularly makes simple mistakes. Knowing English and German, I can spot the mistakes easily, but if it does that badly with other languages, I wouldn't trust it. Just imagine translating a zoo sign with "do not enter the enclosure" drops the "not" in the translation...

Edit: I'm not against AI and I have been using it in certain situations for several years, such as phot editing software for removing artifacts or objects in the background. There it often does a great job. But the "general" intelligence models are, at the moment, generally providing poor information much of the time. They certainly aren't ready for prime time, yet they are being marketed as the Second Coming...
 
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The alternative is just to turn it off. It's my phone, not Apple's.

I don't personally need, want, or care about AI, from Apple or otherwise.

If you think this is the last time you hear about AI you are in for a surprise the next decade. Two generations from now and the iPhone will be AI first. No need to over consume it, but turning the blind eye seems like a route that will end in a big tech jump scare when you don't have a choice to some extend.
 
If you think this is the last time you hear about AI you are in for a surprise the next decade. Two generations from now and the iPhone will be AI first. No need to over consume it, but turning the blind eye seems like a route that will end in a big tech jump scare when you don't have a choice to some extend.

I didn't say it's the last time I'll hear about, nor am I turning a blind eye. I'm just choosing to not use it.

I do have a choice, and if a phone is mostly LLM-style AI, I will have moved on. To being more disconnected, if need be.
 
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Apple intelligence should be smart enough to know which apps are news apps and not summarize them. For some things, accuracy of information is worth more than speed of reading it. News is definitely one of those things.
I mean, it is, Apple just isn't intelligent enough to see these problems before they are released. Its amazing that they managed to both delay their AI work and also have it still be so bad.
 
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That's not addressing the issue head on and allowing users to turn off all AI summaries for BBC News stories, which is the correct response to this issue. Clearly Apple is panicking that if they do that, other news organisations will request similar and that will cause investors to question if Apples AI efforts are floundering. They have put protecting their share price above ethical corporate behaviour.
Been doing that for ages. It’s Cook’s M.O.
 
I've disabled Apple unIntelligence on my 16 Pro, it got in the way more than it helped. Genmoji is the only interesting and somewhat usable feature, but even then, it's a fun gimmick more than a helpful tool. I have more faith in pulling up the ChatGPT app directly when I need something from AI. I'm certainly hoping for a miracle with iOS 19.
 
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