Though Apple Intelligence launched late last year, the company is still struggling to nail down core features that are part of its AI efforts. One of these features, notification summaries, is supposed to make it easier for users to digest notifications by showing the most relevant information. Unfortunately, these summaries have not worked as intended when aggregating and summarizing reports from news apps.
The problem is that instead of providing useful bits of news, notification summaries has been delivering flat out wrong information. For example, it informed users that the suspect in last year’s high profile killing of a healthcare CEO had shot himself, when the individual was already in custody of law enforcement. In another botched effort, it displayed an incorrect summary regarding sporting event results. These are just some of the more notable examples highlighted by major news organizations such as the BBC.
It’s surprising to see how lackluster the rollout of Apple Intelligence has been. That it can’t even get something as basic as generating a short summary of notifications is embarrassing for Apple. The fact that they have been called out by the likes of the BBC should raise alarm bells in Cupertino, that its AI is falling flat on its face. If the Apple hopes to reach its ultimate goal of charging users a monthly fee for more advanced AI-fueled features, it has a lot of work to do.
In an era when news outlets are struggling to find a sustainable economic model, the last thing needed is for Apple to be delivering false information with its half-baked AI. Not to mention, spreading those falsehoods while riding on the backs of hard-working real, human journalists. Thankfully, the company has announced that it’s disabling notification summaries for news-based apps, with the promise that it will be re-enabled sometime in the future in when it’s in a more usable state.