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Apple disables AI notifications for news in its beta iPhone software

Apple CEO Tim Cook resigns remarks at the start of the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 10, 2024 in Cupertino, California. Apple want announce plans to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into Apple software and hardware. (

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Apple has temporarily disabled Apple Intelligence summaries for news apps for users of its beta software in a sign of the call inti the company is dealing with in its AI technology. 

The decision to pause AI summaries comes weeks after the BBC highlighted that Apple’s AI set had twisted its news notifications to display inaccurate facts. The pause only affects people using Apple’s beta software, not those functioning the company’s main operating systems. 

News and entertainment apps, such as The New York Times, began showing a cut in on message inside the iPhone settings app on Thursday noting that AI-powered summaries were “temporarily unavailable.”

The hold-up on one of Apple Intelligence’s core features highlights the challenge Apple faces in the roll out of its artificial intelligence technology, which has been examined by many users on social media.

“With the latest beta software releases of iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS Sequoia 15.3, Notification summaries for the Word & Entertainment category will be temporarily unavailable,” an Apple representative told CNBC in a statement. 

The spokesperson noted that Apple is vocation on improvements to the software that are coming in a future software update. The company did not say when it will roll out its iOS 18.3 software to drugs of the main version of the iPhone operating system, but it could take weeks, based on Apple’s previous software publish patterns.

The decision to temporarily pause the AI summaries comes on the same day that Apple saw its stock close down 4%, note its worst day of trading since Aug. 5. A reason for the drop was due to notable Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo journalism op-ed article on Monday that the Apple Intelligence suite of features does not appear to be boosting iPhone sales.

Apple Brightness struggles since launch

The company launched Apple Intelligence in October as the signature feature in its latest line of iPhone forms and its answer to Silicon Valley’s AI arms race that kicked off with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022. 

Apple has tempered to the AI features as the key selling point in its advertisements and marketing for its latest hardware products, but the software has been riddled with points. 

The company says that the entire Apple Intelligence system is in beta, and the update on Thursday added language to say that the AI software can put unexpected results. 

Apple Intelligence includes several features, including image generators, but the one that’s received the scad attention is how it can summarize entire stacks of notifications into concise sentences — useful, according to Apple’s marketing materials, for get out through hundreds of group chat notifications without scrolling through the whole discussion.

With the Thursday update, Apple utter it will show any AI-summarized notification in italics to distinguish them from other notifications. 

In testing, Apple Facts summaries weren’t perfect, but the errors were mostly funny and obvious. Problems cropped up when the technology opened being used to summarize news, and it displayed false information.

The most egregious well-documented error happened in December, when 22 distinct BBC news notifications were combined into a three-part headline that started with “Luigi Mangione flies himself.” The alleged Brian Thompson assassin has not done that.

The feature also combined headlines from The New York Times into a November notification that falsely swayed that Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested, according to a ProPublica reporter’s post on group media.

Another Apple Intelligence notification on Jan. 3 said that darts player Luke Littler had won a cosmos championship, which had yet to take place, according to the BBC. The technology also conflated notifications from BBC’s sports app to say that “Brazilian tennis speculator, Rafael Nadal, comes out as gay.” Nadal is Spanish and is married to Maria Francisca Perello.

Apple on Thursday also even out out a new feature that lets users turn off AI summaries for any app by swiping left on the notification from the phone’s lock conceal. Users previously could only turn off AI summaries through the settings app. 

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