Ryan Haines / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Certain outlets have complained about AI notification summaries generating misleading headlines on iPhones.
- iOS 18.3 beta 3 addresses the issue by blocking news and entertainment apps from generating these summaries.
- The feature is now clearly marked as a beta in the Settings app, and notification summaries are italicized as an indicator.
Notification summaries are one of the prominent Apple Intelligence perks introduced last year. As its name suggests, the feature scans long or multiple alerts sent by the same app and displays a one-line sentence highlighting their gist. Expectedly, the tool doesn’t always work reliably, and publications like the BBC have complained about it generating false news headlines. To address these concerns, Apple has rolled out five changes to AI notification summaries with the latest iOS 18 beta.
Apple has released iOS 18.3 beta 3 to developers and enthusiasts, and it tweaks how AI notification summaries work in several ways:
- When enabling the feature for the first time, the system now displays a prominent Beta label on the introductory screen.
- During setup, multiple pages now emphasize that the feature occasionally makes mistakes.
- News and entertainment apps are now blocked from generating AI notification summaries across iOS and the respective iPadOS and macOS betas.
- Beyond the existing summary icon in the Notification Center, iOS now italicizes the text of AI-generated alerts as a more prominent indicator.
- Users can now quickly turn off the feature for a specific app by swiping on its notification and hitting the Options button.
It’s worth noting that news and entertainment apps will be able to generate AI notification summaries again via a future iOS update. The company has temporarily turned off the feature for these apps due to how sensitive their alerts can be. Once it manages to fix the tool’s accuracy, it’ll release a patch to iPhone users.
iOS 18.3 will likely roll out to all users later this month. Beyond the abovementioned changes, the release doesn’t introduce any noteworthy features. Those anticipating the supercharged Siri will have to wait for iOS 18.4.
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