Apple has suspended their AI summaries feature after criticism that it repeatedly made massive errors in its summaries of news headlines.
The AI news summaries were not only slightly misleading but completely incorrect. The BBC was one of the major outlets to formally complain after Apple's AI falsely summarized one of their articles claiming that Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself.
Reporters without borders, an international non-profit organization advocates for press freedom worldwide said that the BBC incident proves that"generative AI services are still too immature to produce reliable information for the public".
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Apple Intelligence notification summary was an AI feature designed to help users stay up to date without being overwhelmed by their summaries. It would summarize notifications from different app groups, providing the user with key information quickly.
“Notification summaries for the news and entertainment category will be temporarily unavailable,” Apple confirmed. “We are working on improvements and will make them available in a future software update.”
Apple has deployed a beta software update to developers that disabled the AI feature for news and entertainment headlines. Though the company does plan to enable AI summaries again in a future, refined, update.
Though AI is a useful tool, it is vital to be aware of its flaws including the tendency to hallucinate. Safeguards must be put in place before we rely on artificial intelligence to assist with areas as important and complicated as news reporting.
An AI hallucination is when an AI model generates information that is incorrect, misleading, or simply made up. The model will often present the information in a convincing way, making it difficult to detect.
The spread of false or misleading information generated by AI can have serious impacts, influencing public opinion, fueling misinformation campaigns, and eroding trust in information sources.
