AI pwned Apple, but no one is surprised!

Computerworld.com reported that “Apple recently had to disable AI-generated news summaries in its News app in iOS 18.3. You can guess why: the AI-driven Notification Summaries for the news and entertainment categories in the app occasionally hallucinated, lied, and spread misinformation.”  The January 22, 2025 article entitled " Apple is the latest company to get pwned by AI” (https://www.computerworld.com/article/3806774/apple-is-the-latest-company-to-get-pwned-by-ai.html)  included these comments:

Users complained about the summaries, but Apple acted only after a complaint from BBC News, which told Apple that several of its notifications were improperly summarized. These were major errors in some cases.

The generative AI (genAI) tool incorrectly summarized a BBC headline, falsely claiming that Luigi Mangione, who was charged with murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself. It inaccurately reported that Luke Littler had won the PDC World Darts Championship hours before the competition had even begun and falsely claimed that Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal had come out as gay.

Apple summarized other real stories with false information: The tool said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested, Pete Hegseth had been fired, that Trump tariffs had triggered inflation (before Donald Trump had re-assumed office), and spewed dozens of other falsehoods.

Apple rolled out the feature not knowing it would embarrass the company and force a retreat — which is amazing when you consider that this happens to every other company that tries to automate genAI information delivery of any kind on a large scale. Microsoft Start’s travel section, for example, published an AI-generated guide for Ottawa that included the Ottawa Food Bank as a “tourist hotspot,” encouraging visitors to come on “an empty stomach.

This will only get worse as we all expect!