On Dec. 13, an article by Graham Fraser for BBC News, revealed the news organization had complained to Apple after reports surfaced on social media platforms about Apple’s AI feature, which the Californian tech firm calls Apple Intelligence, had mistakenly made it seem that BBC News had published an article saying that Luigi Mangione, the 26-year old man arrested for the alleged murder on Dec. 4 of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City, had shot himself (which is not true).
Apparently, what happened is that Apple Intelligence, which is capable of summarizing and grouping notifications, incorrectly summarized a BBC News headline for an article about Mangione, turning “Who is Luigi Mangione, CEO shooting suspect?” to “Luigi Mangione shoots himself.”
A BBC spokesperson says the corporation has contacted Apple “to raise this concern and fix the problem.”
According to BBC News, one of the first people to bring attention to this mistake was Ken Schwencke, a senior editor at ProPublica, who published the following post on the micro blogging platform Bluesky on Nov. 21:
The reaction to the BBC News story been swift and largely negative on Bluesky and Mastedon.
Many users expressed serious concerns about the reliability of AI-powered news aggregation tools. They highlighted the potential for such systems to generate misleading or inaccurate information, which could erode trust in both the technology and the news sources it aggregates.
A common theme in the reactions was the potential for AI to amplify misinformation. Users worried that AI-generated summaries could be shared widely without critical scrutiny, leading to the spread of false information.
Some users also questioned the ethics of using AI to generate news summaries without human oversight. They argued that such systems could be used to manipulate public opinion or to promote specific agendas.
In addition to the concerns about accuracy and ethics, many users also found the AI-generated headlines to be humorous or absurd. Some users shared screenshots of particularly egregious examples, which often involved nonsensical or nonsensical summaries of complex news stories.
Featured Image via Pixabay
