Apple removes AI-powered notifications for news in beta iPhone software.

• Users of Apple's beta iPhone, iPad, and Mac software no longer have access to Apple Intelligence summaries for news apps.
• After the BBC pointed out that Apple's AI system was displaying inaccurate news notifications, the company made a move to correct the issue.
• The scrutiny of Apple Intelligence's core feature on social media highlights the challenge Apple faces in rolling out its AI technology.

Apple has temporarily disabled AI summaries for news apps for users of its beta software, indicating the difficulties the company is facing in its AI technology.

Apple has paused its AI summaries following the BBC's revelation that its AI system had displayed inaccurate facts in news notifications. The pause applies only to users of Apple's beta software and not its main operating systems.

On Thursday, The New York Times and other news and entertainment apps displayed a message in the iPhone settings app stating that AI-powered summaries were temporarily unavailable.

The scrutiny of Apple Intelligence's core feature on social media highlights the challenge Apple faces in rolling out its artificial intelligence technology.

Apple has temporarily disabled Notification summaries for the News & Entertainment category in the latest beta software releases of iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS Sequoia 15.3, as confirmed by an Apple representative to CNBC in a statement.

Apple is currently working on software improvements that will be included in a future software update. The company has not yet announced when the iOS 18.3 update will be released to users of the main iPhone operating system, but it may take several weeks based on Apple's previous software release patterns.

On the same day that Apple's stock closed down 4%, marking its worst day of trading since Aug. 5, Apple saw its decision to temporarily pause AI summaries. The reason for the drop was due to notable Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo writing on Monday that the Apple Intelligence suite of features does not appear to be boosting iPhone sales.

Apple Intelligence struggles since launch

In October, the company introduced Apple Intelligence as its flagship AI technology in its new iPhone models, responding to the AI arms race initiated by Silicon Valley with the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022.

The AI features have been advertised as the main selling point for Apple's latest hardware products, but the software has encountered numerous problems.

The company has announced that the entire Apple Intelligence system is still in beta, and the update on Thursday included language stating that the AI software may produce unpredictable outcomes.

Apple Intelligence offers various features, such as image generators, but the most noteworthy is its ability to condense numerous notifications into brief sentences, which is advantageous, as per Apple's advertisements, for quickly sifting through numerous group chat notifications without having to scroll through the entire conversation.

Apple announced that it will distinguish AI-summarized notifications from others by displaying them in italics with the Thursday update.

The technology used to summarize news displayed false information, but the errors were mostly humorous and obvious.

In December, the BBC combined 22 news notifications into a three-part headline that began with "Luigi Mangione shoots himself." However, it is not alleged that Brian Thompson assassinated anyone.

A ProPublica reporter on social media reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested, based on a November notification that combined headlines from The New York Times.

On January 3, Apple Intelligence reported that darts player Luke Littler had won a world championship that had not yet occurred, according to the BBC. The technology also combined notifications from the BBC's sports app to say that "Brazilian tennis player, Rafael Nadal, comes out as gay." However, Nadal is Spanish and is married to Maria Francisca Perello.

On Thursday, Apple introduced a new feature that enables users to disable AI summaries for any app by swiping left on the notification from the phone's lock screen. Prior to this, users could only turn off AI summaries through the settings app.

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