SAN FRANCISCO – Less than six months after rolling out a series of artificial intelligence (AI) features, Apple is disabling one of its signature capabilities: aggregating and summarising news notifications.
It revealed the change on Jan 16 in a software update for developers. This follows an outcry from British media outlets that Apple’s software was misrepresenting news reports.
In December 2024, BBC was among the first to urge Apple to change its software. The call came after the broadcaster sent readers a notification about Luigi Mangione, the man arrested after the killing of Mr Brian Thompson, a healthcare insurance executive, in New York City.
Some iPhones summarised BBC news stories saying “Luigi Mangione shoots himself”. He had not.
Apart from disabling news summaries, Apple said it would be adding a warning for users who opt in to receive notification summaries for other apps. The warning will say that the feature is still in development and that there could be errors.
The flawed summaries feature is the latest in a series of issues that have marred new AI products. In 2024, Google unveiled a chatbot that recommended people eat rocks and use glue to make pizza.
Microsoft postponed features in an AI computer because of security vulnerabilities. And Humane, a start-up that raised US$240 million (S$328 million) for a device called Ai Pin, was panned by tech reviewers because its system sometimes fielded requests inaccurately.
The early struggles with AI products have fuelled questions about the technology’s near-term potential. The technology, which can answer questions, create images and write code, has been heralded for its potential to disrupt businesses and create trillions of dollars in economic value.
But some on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley have expressed doubts about whether AI will quickly produce enough benefits to justify its staggering costs.
“It’s hard and it’s early, and there’s not a clear value proposition yet for mainstream consumers,” said Mr Ben Bajarin, chief executive of Creative Strategies, a tech research firm. “It is going to take time and it’s going to be a real slow roll. No one knows yet what someone is going to look at and say: ‘That’s really valuable.’”
In a note to developers, Apple said it is working to improve summaries of notifications for news and entertainment apps. It plans to make the feature available again in a future software update.
A BBC spokesperson said it is pleased that Apple heard its concerns and decided to make a change. “Our priority is the accuracy of the news we deliver to audiences, which is essential to building and maintaining trust,” he added.
The news of Apple’s changes was reported earlier by several websites devoted to Apple, including MacRumors and 9to5Mac.
Apple was among the last of tech’s biggest companies to enter the AI arms race. In 2024, the company introduced iPhones with an AI software system called Apple Intelligence. It said the system would be able to sort messages, offer writing suggestions and create a more capable Siri powered by generative AI.
But the features were not available on the iPhones that Apple began shipping in September 2024. Instead, over the past few months, it has gradually introduced some features, such as tools to improve e-mails and the ability to access ChatGPT through Siri.
The AI capabilities are available only on iPhone 15 and 16 models. The company has limited its availability to English-speaking countries, including the United States, Australia and Britain.
In April, Apple plans to add support for Chinese, French, German, Italian, Spanish and other languages.
The company made Apple Intelligence the focus of its promotions of the iPhone 16. But its lack of availability in some key markets, such as China, weakened demand for the devices.
Apple’s share of the global smartphone market fell to 18 per cent in 2024 from 19 per cent in 2023, according to Counterpoint Research, a firm that tracks device sales.
“There’s a lot of big questions about the initial efforts to do on-device AI,” said Mr Bob O’Donnell, chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research, a market research firm. “In the long run, it will unquestionably be the right way to go, but it’s not a trivial task.” NYTIMES
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