AI 101: Apple Intelligence Disaster, Apple Rolls Back AI Features
How the latest AI failure highlights struggles across the industry with hallucinations
Welcome to another edition of AI 101, where every Wednesday we bring you the biggest AI update of the week.
This week’s update includes contributions from our editorial team: Melinda Mei and Luna Meline.
This Week’s Update: Apple Suspends AI-Generated News Summaries
On January 16th, Apple announced that it would disable a recently introduced Apple Intelligence feature that summarizes news notifications. The move follows a series of errors that presented users with notifications of false news stories. In December, some iPhones inaccurately summarized a BBC alert, telling users that Luigi Mangione, the man arrested for the killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself. The feature has also misrepresented notifications from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Sky News.
In a software update for developers, the company said it would add a warning stating that the feature is under development and could have inaccuracies for non-news apps using AI-generated summaries.
Why This Is Important
The Apple Intelligence debacle demonstrates AI’s growing misinformation problem. “Trust in news is low enough already without giant American corporations coming in and using it as a kind of test product,” warned Alan Rusbridger, former editor-in-chief of The Guardian. Launched as a key feature of the latest iPhone models, Apple Intelligence failed to boost phone sales. On the same day the AI summaries were temporarily paused, Apple’s stock fell by 4%, its worst performance since August 5th.
Apple’s AI struggles highlight the broader issue of “hallucinations” in large language models, which often generate plausible but inaccurate information, as evidenced by studies showing these tools still cannot be fully trusted.
Quick Hits:
President Donald Trump repealed Joe Biden’s executive order requiring AI developers to share the results of safety tests with the U.S. government and set testing standards to mitigate risks from AI. Republicans had argued that the order hindered innovation and free speech in AI development.
The Brutalist, a 2024 drama film and frontrunner for Best Picture at the Oscars this year, is facing backlash for its use of AI to tweak actors’ Hungarian accents and create architecture in the background of a scene at the end of the movie. The editor and director said the AI used did not detract from the acting or creativity.
Anduril, an AI start-up building weapons for the military, is planning to construct a $1-billion-dollar factory in Ohio.