Apple Intelligence would have distributed false information wrongly attributed to the BBC via its grouped notifications service. Since then, the tech giant has been working on an update.
Apple has decided to react. After complaints from the BBC, which has been denouncing Apple Intelligence’s errors in summarizing news on iPhone since December, the tech giant said it was working on an update.
The announcement was made via a press release relayed by Techcrunch, this Tuesday, January 7.
“A software update in the coming weeks will clarify when the text displayed is a summary provided by Apple Intelligence. We encourage users to report an issue if they see an unexpected notification summary,” the statement said.
Currently being tested
“Apple Intelligence features are in beta and we are continually making improvements based on user feedback,” adds the company, while reminding that this feature must be activated voluntarily.
Indeed, le service Apple Intelligencelaunched in December in the United Kingdom, generates grouped notifications of several pieces of information, using artificial intelligence. However, these summaries in the form of notifications sometimes disseminate misleading information, attributing it to the media from which they are inspired, such as the BBC.
Some alerts, citing the British media, wrongly asserted that Luigi Mangione, the man arrested after the murder of the boss of an American health insurance giant, had committed suicide, or that tennis player Rafael Nadal had revealed his homosexuality.
-Faced with this observation, the BBC complained several times to Apple. “BBC News is the most trusted media outlet in the world. It is essential to us that our audience can have confidence in every piece of information or article published on our behalf, and this includes notifications,” explained on December 12 a BBC spokesperson to AFP.
Many complaints
“These Apple AI summaries do not reflect, and in some cases completely contradict, the BBC’s original content,” the outlet recently added. “It is critical that Apple urgently addresses these issues because the accuracy of our information is essential to maintaining trust.”
And the media is far from being the only one. Last November, a ProPublica journalist noted that Apple Intelligence cited the New York Times on erroneous notifications, claiming that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested.
For its part, the media Reporters Without Borders, an organization representing the rights and interests of journalists, called on Apple to deactivate this functionality.
The Apple Intelligence Bulk Notifications service is available on the latest iPhone model (iPhone16)and on some previous models. It is not yet available in France.
