January 19, 2025
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Latest iOS 18.3 Beta Tells iPhone Users When AI Could Have Sent Them Fake News

Joshua Coleman06 mins


Just before last Christmas, the BBC and other news platforms were complaining that iPhone users were using Apple Intelligence was receive AI-created summary notifications about news events that spread made-up information. Some iPhone users had received a notification containing an AI-created summary based on a news article published by the BBC. The notice incorrectly stated that Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan street, had committed suicide.
Another AI-created notification summary, this one including stories published in The New York Timesfalsely claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested. Apple admitted that the problem existed; Earlier this month, the tech giant said it was working on a software change that would let users know more clearly when a summary notification is the work of Apple Intelligence.

iOS 18.3 beta 3 attempts to inform iPhone users about AI’s propensity to make errors when summarizing notifications

Apple just released iOS 18.3 Beta 3 and update includes Apple’s changes to news summary notifications. To enable the feature, go to Settings > Notifications and tap “Summarize notification”. From the Summarize Notification page, you can enable or disable the feature from the top of the page. When you first enable the feature, Apple will send a “Summary Notifications” landing page making it clear that this is a beta feature.

Apple makes changes to notification summaries in iOS 18.3 beta 3. | Image credit-PhoneArena

On the “Summary Notifications” landing page, Apple writes: “This beta feature will occasionally make errors that could misrepresent the meaning of the original notification. » From this landing page, you can tap the blue option “Choose which notifications to summarize” and you will be able to choose to receive these notifications from different groups of apps installed on your iPhone.

You can heed the page’s warning reminding you that some summaries might distort actual news, or you can turn the feature off. To do this, go to Settings > Notifications and tap “Summarize notification”. From the Summarize Notification page, you can turn off the feature from the top of the screen or navigate through individual apps to turn off notification summaries.

iOS 18.3 beta 3 brings a new italicized look to summary notifications. | Image credit-PhoneArena

Apple also added a new way to quickly turn off notification summaries of a received notification on the lock screen. Let’s say you want to stop receiving such summary notifications from Fox News. The next time you receive a notification from Fox News that has been summarized, swipe left on it, tap the options, and tap Turn off summaries.

After installation iOS 18.3 beta 3, summary notifications will be displayed with italicized text. This will indicate that these notifications are AI-generated, as opposed to regular notifications which are not italicized. Additionally, since notifications from apps in the News & Entertainment category are most likely to be incorrectly summarized by AI, apps that fall into this segment will not offer summarized notifications indefinitely. Apple will work on a new way to create summary notifications from these apps that don’t distort the truth and will include it in a future update.

How to install iOS 18.3 beta 3 if you are already using iOS 18 beta software on your iPhone

With these changes, Apple is making it clear that some AI-generated notification summaries will contain incorrect information, meaning users should take the information with the proverbial grain of salt. In other words, the update will not prevent errors from occurring, but it will notify users that such errors occur. This is one of the limitations of using AI which tends to “hallucinate”.

If you are currently running the iOS 18 beta program, go to Settings > General > Software update and follow the instructions to install iOS 18.3 beta 3.

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