• Apple has announced that it will pause AI-powered summaries for news and entertainment apps.
• The feature has been found to generate false stories, prompting concerns from international publications.
• The feature will be re-enabled after the issue has been addressed, but no timeline has been shared.

On-device was all the rage in 2024, and will continue to be so this year, but even Apple is struggling to get things right. In December, Apple Intelligence began rolling to more territories outside of the US, with one of the features being AI-powered news summaries, along with summaries for supported entertainment apps.

While the feature is intended to be useful, it has proved anything but.

Per TechCrunch, Apple has decided to pause the AI-powered news summaries due to serious inaccuracies in terms of what is being generated and shared with iPhone, iPad, and Mac users.

Egregious examples of mistakes made by the AI-powered news summaries include false reporting on Luigi Mangione. In December, the BBC complained to Apple regarding a headline created by the on-device AI, which said that Mangione had shot himself after he was arrested for the murder of healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thompson in New York.

Other publications have since complained too, with some asking Apple to remove the feature altogether while the inaccuracies are addressed.

The company is now acquiescing, disabling notification from the summaries in developer previews for iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS Sequoia 15.3.

Apple is also planning some changes in terms of how these summaries are served to users. These include displaying AI-powered summaries in italics to better distinguish them from the notifications that come directly from the app. Added to this will be the ability to disable summaries for selected apps within the Lock Screen of compatible iPhone and iPad devices.

Lastly, users will receive a notification that the summaries feature is in beta, so Apple can better argue against any potentially problematic notifications being created, such as the aforementioned Mangione one.

A public beta for iOS 18.3 is anticipated for next week, but no mention has been made of when it will roll out to users in full.

As on-device AI becomes more commonplace, it is now a case of improving the performance of features that supposedly designed to be on par with the human-designed or made predecessors.

[Image – Photo by Sumudu Mohottige on Unsplash]