Apple is discontinuing an artificial intelligence feature that generated inaccurate summaries of news headlines.
The tech company received a complaint from the BBC after the AI-generated service issued a news alert with the corporation’s logo falsely telling some iPhone users that Luigi Mangione, accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself.
Other fake ads bearing the BBC logo included one claiming that Luke Littler had won the PDC World Darts final before playing in it and another claiming that tennis player Rafael Nadal had “come out” as gay.
Apple said in a statement that the feature would be discontinued as part of its next software update, which is imminent. Other news organizations were hit by the errors, with a New York Times summary of alerts wrongly stating that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested.
“Notification summaries for the news and entertainment category will be temporarily unavailable,” Apple said. “We are working on improvements and will make them available in a future software update.”
The news summaries are part of Apple’s push to include more AI features in its products, under the Apple Intelligence label, which is available in the US, UK, Australia and Canada, but not the EU and China. .
Apple had previously said it would update the feature, rather than discontinue it. In the United Kingdom, the National Union of Journalists had called for the service to be removed to “ensure it does not contribute to the misinformation already prevalent and cause harm to online journalism.”
The feature summarized users’ news notifications and grouped them into a single alert on their lock screens. Apple is working on a version that will warn iPhone users about potential errors and use italicized text.
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“We are pleased that Apple has listened to our concerns and is pausing the news summary feature,” a BBC spokesperson said. “We look forward to working with them constructively on next steps. Our priority is the accuracy of the news we deliver to audiences, which is essential to building and maintaining trust.”