Apple CEO Tim Cook delivers remarks at the start of the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 10, 2024 in Cupertino, California. Apple will 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 challenges the company is facing in its AI technology.Â
The decision to end AI summaries comes weeks after the BBC highlighted that Apple’s AI system had distorted its news reports to show incorrect facts. The pause only affects people using Apple’s beta software, not those using the company’s main operating systems.Â
News and entertainment apps like The New York Times began displaying a short message inside the iPhone’s Settings app on Thursday, noting that AI-powered summaries were “temporarily unavailable.”
The pause in one of Apple Intelligence’s key features highlights the challenge Apple faces in rolling out its AI technology, which has been scrutinized by many users on social media.
“With the latest beta software releases of iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS Sequoia 15.3, the News & Entertainment category notification summaries will be temporarily unavailable,” an Apple representative told CNBC in a statement.
The spokesperson noted that Apple is working on software improvements that will come in a future software update. The company did not say when it will release its iOS 18.3 software to users of the major version of the iPhone operating system, but it could take weeks, based on Apple’s previous software release patterns.
The decision to temporarily halt AI summaries comes on the same day that Apple saw its shares close down 4%, marking its worst trading day since August 5. One reason for the decline was due to prominent Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo writing on Monday that the Apple Intelligence feature set does not appear to be boosting iPhone sales.
Apple’s intelligence has had problems from the start
The company launched Apple Intelligence in October as a signature feature in its latest line of iPhone models and its response to Silicon Valley’s AI arms race that began with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022.
Apple has used artificial intelligence features as a major selling point in the advertising and marketing of its latest hardware products, but the software has been riddled with problems.Â
The company says the entire Apple Intelligence system is in beta, and Thursday’s update added language to say the AI software can produce unexpected results.Â
Apple Intelligence includes several features, including image generators, but what’s gotten the most attention is how it can condense entire groups of notifications into concise sentences — useful, according to Apple’s marketing materials, for getting through hundreds of notifications. group chats without scrolling through the entire discussion.
With Thursday’s update, Apple said it will display each AI-summary notification in italics to distinguish them from other notifications.Â
In testing, Apple Intelligence’s summaries weren’t perfect, but the errors were mostly funny and obvious. Problems arose when the technology began to be used to digest news and display false information.
The most egregious well-documented error occurred in December, when 22 separate BBC news releases were combined into a three-part headline beginning with “Luigi Mangione shoots himself”. The alleged killer of Brian Thompson did not.
The feature also combined headlines from The New York Times on a November announcement that falsely said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested, according to a ProPublica reporter’s social media post.
Another announcement by Apple Intelligence on January 3 said that darts player Luke Littler had won a world championship, which had yet to take place, according to the BBC. The tech also messed up notifications from the BBC’s sports app to say “Brazilian tennis player Rafael Nadal comes out as gay”. Nadal is Spanish and married to Maria Francisca Perello.
Apple on Thursday also introduced a new feature that allows users to turn off AI summaries for any app by swiping left on the notification from the phone’s lock screen. Users could previously only disable AI summaries through the Settings app.Â
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