Apple pauses AI notification summaries of news alerts in latest iOS beta
Some significant changes are coming to Apple Intelligence notification summaries. With the latest slate of developer previews for iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3 and macOS Sequoia 15.3, Apple has suspended the system’s aggregated notifications, specifically from news and entertainment apps, while it works on improvements to the alerts.
The company has also added a new disclosure that appears when users first enable notification summaries. It states that the notifications are a beta feature and that they may produce unexpected results. Separately, the betas add a new option that allows users to decide from the lock screen whether they want notifications from an app summarized. Lastly, the AI-generated alerts use italicized text to further distinguish them from their non-summarized counterparts.
Last week, Apple told Engadget it was working on an update to notification summaries. “Apple Intelligence features are in beta and we are continuously making improvements with the help of user feedback,” Apple said. “A software update in the coming weeks will further clarify when the text being displayed is summarization provided by Apple Intelligence. We encourage users to report a concern if they view an unexpected notification summary.”
Notification summaries are one of the features that arrived alongside the initial release of Apple Intelligence with iOS 18.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1. Shortly after rolling out to regular users, they quickly led to bad press for Apple. Notably, the BBC published multiple reports accusing the blurbs of spreading misinformation. One especially unflattering example saw a summary claim that Luigi Mangione, the alleged murderer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself.
