Apple to label notification summaries to indicate use of AI

Apple said on Monday it would release an update to better indicate that its notification summaries are generated by artificial intelligence.

“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,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement.

Apple’s notification summaries are helpful, but they can also be quite inaccurate. The summaries are sometimes funny, but they often also cause mild confusion. Last month, BBC complained that the feature misrepresented a headline, with the summary saying that Luigi Mangione, the person charged with the murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself.

Last year, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Apple’s SVP of software engineering, Craig Federighi, said Apple Intelligence doesn’t summarize notifications it deems as sensitive.

Tech companies are figuring out how to better label AI-generated content. Last year, Meta had to tweak its labeling for images posted on its social networks that were generated or edited using AI after photographers complained that they didn’t use AI tools to edit their photos. Google also started adding disclosures for images made using one its AI tools.