U.S. News

Apple Pulls AI-Generated News Alerts After Wacky Headline Screw-Ups

FAKE NEWS

The feature churned out a series of falsehoods including that Donald Trump had endorsed a Democrat for president.

Apple pulled an AI news summary feature after it gave users inaccurate information.
SOPA Images/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Gett

Apple has temporarily pulled the plug on a recently launched artificial intelligence (AI) feature that churned out inaccurate summaries of news headlines from the BBC, Sky News, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other media organizations. The iPhone maker’s service falsely created the headline that Luigi Mangione—the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson—had shot himself. It also incorrectly told users that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested and that Spanish tennis player Rafael Nadal had come out as gay. It even claimed Donald Trump had endorsed Kamala Harris’ 2024 Democratic running mate Tim Walz for president, according to the Post. A spokesperson for Apple told news outlets the company is “working on improvements and will make them available in a future software update.” The company came under intense scrutiny for the heavily marketed feature which butchered some news headlines, with Post tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler slamming it as “wildly irresponsible” in a rant on social media platform Bluesky this week.

Read it at The Washington Post

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.