Apple Plans to Make its AI-Powered Notification Summaries More Transparent

Apple released yesterday iOS 18.2.1 and iPadOS 18.2.1, which follow the release of iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 on December 11. While the release notes just mention “important bug fixes,” Apple also confirmed that an upcoming update will improve the AI-powered notification summaries that recently showed inaccurate news to some users.

Notification summaries are one of the first Apple Intelligence features that Apple introduced on iOS 18.1 in October. These notification summaries are an optional feature on devices that support Apple Intelligence, and they’re designed to summarize information from notifications to surface key details right on the Lock Screen. While this sounds useful on paper, these notification summaries aren’t always reliable.

Today, a report from the BBC pointed out a series of inaccurate news alerts based on its content generated by Apple’s AI-powered notification summaries. One of these notifications that some users saw mistakenly summarized a BBC headline and claimed that Luigi Mangione, the person accused of shooting and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself. “These AI summarisations by Apple do not reflect – and in some cases completely contradict – the original BBC content,” the BBC said on Monday.

In an official statement shared with the BBC, Apple said that an upcoming software update will make it clearer when text in a notification has been summarized by Apple Intelligence. “Apple Intelligence features are in beta and we are continuously making improvements with the help of user feedback,” the company explained. “A software update in the coming weeks will further clarify when the text being displayed is summarization provided by Apple Intelligence. We encourage users to report a concern if they view an unexpected notification summary.”

Apple has been taking its time to roll out generative AI features, and Apple Intelligence comes with a “beta” label for good reason. Last year, Google also had to fix its AI Overviews in search results after many users complained about their nonsensical and sometimes hazardous answers. While Google launched AI Overviews in more than 100 countries in October and made them accessible in more languages, Apple’s notification summaries are at least optional, and they’re only available in select English-speaking countries.