Apple, the iPhone maker, has said it will update its AI feature following calls to withdraw the controversial feature for issuing inaccurate news alerts.
The AI feature is expected to summarize news notifications but has sometimes fabricated news on its iPhones much to the displeasure of readers and news publishers. Among the inaccurate news alerts, the AI feature alleged that Rafael Nadal has come out as gay and that a man accused of killing a US insurance boss had shot himself.
Apple will roll out updates in the coming weeks
The influx of inaccurate news has let to Apple saying it will update its AI feature in order to avoid further inaccurate news posting.
According to the tech giant, an update will be rolled out in the coming weeks to correct the malfunctioning one. Apple said it is developing a software update that will further clarify when news notifications were summaries generated by the company’s Intelligence system.
The AI is meant to summarise breaking news notifications but has in some instances invented entirely false claims.
Apple responded this week when it said it was working to clarify that summaries were AI-generated, despite the BBC being the first to complain to the tech giant about its journalism being misrepresented in December.
The BBC was told by Alan Rusbridger the former editor of the Guardian that Apple needed to go further and pull a product he said was clearly not ready.
“The technology was out of control and posed a considerable misinformation risk,” Rusbridger who also sits on Meta’s Oversight Board that reviews appeals of the company’s content moderation decisions added.
“Trust in news is low enough already without giant American corporations coming in and using it as a kind of test product,” he added on BBC Radio Four.
Apple’s faulty feature was one of the AI tools released to users of some newer iPhones in December, including the iPhone 16, 15 Pro, and 15 Pro Max handsets, as well as on some iPads and Macs.
“Apple Intelligence features are in beta and we are continuously making improvements with the help of user feedback,” Apple said in a statement to the BBC. “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,” the tech company added.
Journalist groups show disgruntlement with Apple
Last week, Apple’s AI inaccurately summarised BBC app notifications to claim that Luke Littler had won the PDC World Darts Championship hours before it began.
In November, a ProPublica journalist highlighted erroneous Apple AI summaries of alerts from the New York Times app suggesting it had reported that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested.
A further inaccurate summary of a New York Times story appears to have been published on January 6, relating to the fourth anniversary of the Capitol Hill riots.
One of the world’s largest unions for journalists, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has voiced its concerns saying Apple “must act swiftly” and remove Apple Intelligence to cut on misinforming the public.
NUJ echoed priors calls by another journalism body, Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
“At a time where access to accurate reporting has never been more important, the public must not be placed in a position of second-guessing the accuracy of news they receive.”
Laura Davison, NUJ general secretary.
RSF also said that Apple’s intervention was not enough and joined calls for the product to be taken offline.
Apple is not alone in having rolled out generative AI tools that can create text, images, and more content when prompted by users, but with varying results.
Google’s AI overviews feature, which provides a written summary of information from results at the top of its search engine in response to user queries, faced criticism last year for producing some erratic responses.
At the time a Google spokesperson said that these were isolated examples and that the feature was generally working well.
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