BBC complains to Apple over misleading shooting headline

The BBC has complained to Apple after the tech giant’s new iPhone feature created a false headline about a high-profile murder in the United States.

Apple Intelligence, launched in UK earlier this weekUses artificial intelligence (AI) to summarize and group information together.

This week, an AI-powered summary misrepresented that BBC News published an article claiming that Luigi Mangione, the man arrested after the murder of healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thompson in New York, turned himself in. Was shot. He didn’t.

A BBC spokesperson said the corporation had contacted Apple “to raise this concern and fix the problem”.

Apple declined to comment.

A BBC spokesperson said, “BBC News is the world’s most trusted news media.”

“It is important for us that our audiences can trust any information or journalism published in our name and this includes information.”

The notification, which made false claims about Mangione, was otherwise accurate in its summaries about the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and updates on South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.

But it appears the BBC is not the only news publisher whose headlines have been misrepresented by Apple’s new AI technology.

On November 21, three New York Times articles on different topics were grouped together in one notification – one in part reading “Netanyahu arrested”, referring to the Israeli Prime Minister.

It was incorrectly summarizing a newspaper report about the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, rather than any report about Netanyahu’s arrest.

The mistake was exposed on BlueSky By a reporter for the American investigative journalism website ProPublica.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify the screenshots, and The New York Times has not commented to BBC News.

Apple says one reason people like its AI-powered notification summaries is to help reduce interruptions caused by ongoing notifications and allow the user to prioritize more important notifications.

This is only available on certain iPhones – those using iOS 18.1 system version or later and recent devices (all iPhone 16 phones, 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max). It is also available on some iPads and Macs.

Petros Iosifidis, a professor of media policy at City University in London, told BBC News that Apple’s mistake “seems shameful”.

He said, “I can see the pressure to be first to market, but I’m surprised Apple put its name on such an obviously half-baked product.”

“Yes, there are potential benefits – but the technology is not there yet and there is a real danger of spreading misinformation.”

Grouped notifications are marked with a specific icon, and users can report any concerns they have on the notification summary on their device. Apple has not said how many reports it has received.

Apple Intelligence not only summarizes articles from publishers, but also summarizes emails and text messages sometimes fail to reach goals,

And this isn’t the first time a big tech company has found that AI summaries don’t always work.

In May, in what Google described as “an isolated instance”, its AI overview tool for Internet searches told some users how to stick cheese on a pizza, telling them to use “non-toxic glue”. Should consider.

AI-generated responses from search engines also say Geologists advise humans to eat one rock per day,