Apple has come under intense scrutiny for rolling out an underbaked AI-powered feature that summarizes breaking news while often butchering it beyond recognition.For over a month, roughly as long as the feature has been available to iPhone users, publishers have found that it consistently generates false information and pushes it to millions of users.Despite broadcasting a barrage of fabrications for weeks, Apple has yet to meaningfully address the problem."This is my periodic rant that Apple Intelligence is so bad that today it got every fact wrong in its AI a summary of Washington Post news alerts," the newspaper's tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler wrote in a post on Bluesky this week.Fowler appended a screenshot of an alert, which claimed that Pete Hegseth, who's been facing a confrontational confirmation hearing for the role of defense secretary this week, had been fired by his former employer, Fox News which is false and not what the WaPo's syndication of an Associated Press story"It's wildly irresponsible that Apple doesn't turn off summaries for news apps until it gets a bit better at this AI thing," Fowler added.The constant blunders of Apple's AI summaries put the tech's nagging shortcomings on full display, demonstrating that even tech giants like Apple are failing miserably to successfully integrate AI without constantly embarrassing themselves.AI models are still coming up with all sorts of "hallucinated" lies, a problem experts believe could be intrinsic to the tech. After all, large language models like the one powering Apple's summarizing feature simply predict the next word based on probability and are incapable of actually understanding the content they're paraphrasing, at least for the time being.And the stakes are high, given the context. Apple's notifications are intended to alert iPhone users to breaking news not sow distrust and confusion.The story also highlights a stark power imbalance, with news organizations powerless to determine how Apple represents their work to its vast number of users."News organizations have vigorously complained to Apple about this, but we have no power over what iOS does to the accurate and expertly crafted alerts we send out," Fowler wrote in a followup.In December, the BBC first filed a complaint with Apple after the feature mistakenly claimed that Luigi Mangione, the man who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself an egregious and easily disproven fabrication.Last week, Apple finally caved and responded to the complaint, vowing to add a clarifying disclaimer that the summaries were AI-generated while also attempting to distance itself from bearing any responsibility."Apple Intelligence features are in beta and we are continuously making improvements with the help of user feedback," a company spokesperson told the BBC in a statement. "A software update in the coming weeks will further clarify when the text being displayed is summarization provided by Apple Intelligence.""We encourage users to report a concern if they view an unexpected notification summary," the company continued.The disclaimer unintentionally points to the dubious value proposition of today's AI: what's the point of a summarizing feature if the company is forced to include a disclaimer on each one that it might be entirely wrong? Should Apple's customers really be the ones responsible for pointing out each time its AI summaries are spreading lies?"It just transfers the responsibility to users, who in an already confusing information landscape will be expected to check if information is true or not," Reporters Without Borders technology and journalism desk head Vincent Berthier told the BBC.Journalists are particularly worried about further eroding trust in the news industry, a pertinent topic given the tidal wave of AI slop that has been crashing over the internet."At a time where access to accurate reporting has never been more important, the public must not be placed in a position of second-guessing the accuracy of news they receive," the National Union of Journalists general secretary Laura Davison told the BBC.Share This Article