One of the key features of the new Apple Intelligence suite on the iPhone is notification summaries. At its best, it’s a genuine time-saver, compacting an entire email chain or into a short digest. But it’s still in beta, and the errors it’s been making have been a cause for concern, especially for news organizations. With the upcoming iOS 18.3 software release, Apple is taking action to solve this.
The BBC, one of the world’s great broadcasters, prides itself on its impartiality and accuracy. Let me tell you, as a Brit, that when the BBC makes mistakes, it’s always a national scandal.
So, when the notification summaries appearing on the iPhone for apps such as BBC News and BBC Sport came up with summaries which were inaccurate, the corporation was concerned, and let Apple know that it wasn’t happy.
The BBC’s logos were in the summaries, but the content was awry. At one point it was claimed a darts player had won a championship before playing in it and a tennis player was muddled with another—and the claim that they had come out as gay was incorrect. At one point it said, incorrectly, that the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson had shot himself. Other news organizations such as the New York Times and Sky News had stories incorrectly summarized.
Apple’s reaction has been to temporarily suspend the capability, for a specific group of summaries only. An Apple spokesperson said, “With the latest beta software releases of iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS Sequoia 15.3, Notification summaries for the News & Entertainment category will be temporarily unavailable. We are working on improvements and will make them available in a future software update.”
The BBC’s response has been prompt. “We’re pleased that Apple has listened to our concerns and is pausing the summarisation feature for news,” 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.”
Apple will halt this iPhone feature with the release of iOS 18.3, which is currently in developer and public beta. That’s likely to arrive before the end of the month, perhaps in the last week of January.
