BBC Protests Apple Intelligence's Misinterpretation Feature

Apple Intelligence, incorrect in interpreting the news (photo: x @AppleAiIntel)

JAKARTA - The BBC has lodged a protest with Apple regarding a summary of notification features on iOS 18 which it deems to have misinterpreted their news. This feature, which was introduced through Apple Intelligence, is designed to help users by presenting important points from documents or a collection of notifications. However, the feature is now facing strong criticism for providing false conclusions.

In one of the examples revealed by the BBC, notifications from their news article were summarized as "Luigi Mangione shot himself." In fact, the original article explains that Luigi Mangione was detained as a suspect in the murder case of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the man are still alive.

"The audience's trust in information or journalism published on our behalf is very important, including through notifications," a BBC spokesman said in a statement. The BBC has contacted Apple to raise this concern and asked the company to immediately fix the matter.

The BBC is not the only victim of this wrong summary. The New York Times also encountered a similar problem on November 21, when their notification was summarized as "Netanyahu was arrested." In fact, the original article discusses the international court issuing an arrest warrant for the Israeli Prime Minister.

The term for this kind of error is known as "fundament," which is when artificial intelligence models produce inaccurate information although the data is clear. This halucination can occur for various reasons, such as problems in training data, lack of context, or erroneous assumptions about source data.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has previously acknowledged the potential for this issue when launching Apple Intelligence last June. He said that although the quality would be "very high," the system would still not reach 100% accuracy level. In August, it was revealed that Apple had given instructions to their AI to avoid hallucinations, including explicit commands such as "Don't create non-existent factual information."

However, the main problem lies in Apple's approach that prioritizes processing on users' devices to maintain privacy. This move limits Apple's ability to monitor summary results that actually appear on users' devices, making it difficult to provide immediate updates or fixes.

Apple declined to comment on the protests filed by the BBC. Meanwhile, these complaints underscore the challenges tech companies face in ensuring their AI is not only intelligent but also trustworthy.