Apple is suspending AI notification summaries for news and entertainment apps after facing backlash for generating inaccurate news alerts. Additionally, the company is making changes to the entire notification summary to increase transparency.
In the latest developer preview for iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS Sequoia 15.3, Apple has completely disabled notification summaries for all news and entertainment apps, and plans to re-enable them in a future update with improvements.
The changes come weeks after the BBC complained to Apple after one of its articles incorrectly said Luigi Mangione, who was charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had committed suicide. It was done later.
In addition to getting a notification summary for the selected app, all notification summaries are now italicized to help users distinguish them from regular notifications. Additionally, users will be able to disable notification summaries for specific apps directly from the lock screen.
Apple will also begin notifying users that the Notification Summary feature is a beta feature when they enable it. This notification, located in the Settings app, informs users that a feature may contain an error.
The change isn't surprising, as Apple announced last week that it would be releasing an update to “further clarify” that text displayed in notification summaries was generated by Apple Intelligence. Some wondered if this would be in the form of a new label or badge, but so far that hasn't been the case.
A public beta is expected to be released next week, but it's unclear when iOS 18.3 will be generally available.