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Apple Intelligence falsely attributed fake news to BBC, broadcaster alleges in complaint

The BBC said that the AI-generated summary of a notification falsely claimed that UnitedHealthcare suspect Luigi Mangione had died by suicide.

The new Apple Intelligence features are available with iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2 and macOS Sequioa 15.2 update. (Image Source: Apple)

A week after its launch in the UK, Apple Intelligence has hit a hallucination-related snag that has triggered a complaint from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

The complaint alleged that a piece of AI-generated, fake news shown to iPhone users was falsely attributed to the BBC. AI-driven summarisation of notifications, webpages, and messages is a key feature of Apple Intelligence. It uses generative AI to group notifications from different information sites and shows them to users.

In this case, the BBC said that the AI-generated summary incorrectly claimed that Luigi Mangione had died by suicide and further indicated that the BBC’s news website had published the fake article. However, Mangione – who was charged last week with murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson – is currently in the custody of US authorities.

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“BBC News is the most trusted news media in the world. It is essential to us that our audiences can trust any information or journalism published in our name and that includes notifications,” a BBC spokesperson said in a statement, adding that it has contacted Apple to raise this concern and fix the problem.

Also Read | I tried Apple Intelligence on my iPhone 15 Pro, and it made me rethink what AI can do to simplify my life

Additionally, the BBC reported that Apple Intelligence’s summarisation feature had misrepresented content from news articles published by The New York Times. The AI-generated summary of three articles by the US-based daily had one part that read, “Netanyahu arrested.” It is important to note that the Israeli prime minister has not been arrested. However, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against him and two others on November 21, 2024.

Furthermore, a recent study by Columbia Journalism School found “numerous” instances of publishers’ content being inaccurately cited and decontextualised after asking ChatGPT to identify the source of block quotes pulled from 200 news articles posted by various publishers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Financial Times.

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