American technological giant Apple has suspended a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) feature that was criticised for making repeated mistakes in its summaries of news headlines.
According to a report by BBC on Friday (Jan 17), an Apple spokesperson said that the company was working on improvements and the feature would be made available in a future software update.
Also read | Foreign smartphone sales in China drop 47% in November, challenging Apple’s dominance
"With the latest beta software releases of iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS Sequoia 15.3, Notification summaries for the News & Entertainment category will be temporarily unavailable," the spokesperson added.
The complaints about the AI feature
Citing social media posts from journalists, BBC reported that the AI feature inaccurately summarised headlines from the BBC, Sky News, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.
Also read | Apple to pay $95 million for lawsuit against Siri for listening user's private conversation
Media organisations and press groups pushed Apple to pull back, warning that the feature was not ready and that the AI-generated errors added to the issues of misinformation and falling trust in news.
What does the feature do?
The feature was rolled out to users in the United Kingdom (UK) in December 2024, to make the lives of news consumers more efficient.
The feature grouped and rewrote previews of multiple recent app notifications into a single alert on users' lock screens.
(With inputs from agencies)