That Luigi Mangione committed suicide in prison by shooting himself (he is still alive), that Luke Littler was already the winner of the world darts championship (he was in the semi-finals), or that “the Brazilian tennis player” Rafael Nadal came out of the closet as a gay man. In recent weeks, Apple’s generative artificial intelligence service spread these false and inaccurate headlines through its news system. All this misinformation was also attributed to the BBC. The British media had to deny the stories and blamed the errors on the apple company. The technology company, which has not made many clarifications on the issue, said on Monday that it was working on a system change to “further specify” when the news notifications that reach iPhones are summaries generated by the Apple Intelligence system.
“BBC News is the most credible media outlet in the world. “It is essential to us that our audiences can trust any information published on our behalf and that includes notifications,” said a spokesperson for the corporation. And he added that the BBC has been in contact with Apple since early December — when the problem began — “to raise this concern and resolve the predicament.” The response from the Cupertino company has been brief: “Apple Intelligence functions are in beta version and we are continually improving with the help of user feedback.”
This is not the first mistake that Apple’s new generative tool has made since it began to be implemented on phones with iOS 18.1 or higher operating system in mid-December. On November 21, a ProPublica journalist uploaded a screenshot to his social networks in which you can see a notification of The New York Times which claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested.
On December 19, the journalism organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) formally raised a petition asking Apple to remove its artificial intelligence-based news summaries. Vincent Berthier, head of RSF’s technology and journalism office, declared at the time that “the automated production of false information attributed to a media outlet is a blow to its credibility.” This, he added, represents “a danger to the public’s right to receive reliable information on current affairs.”
Apple produces personalized headlines, based on user interest and making associations between information published by different media, which could explain errors in its generative software.
