The BBC complained last month after an AI-generated summary of its headline falsely told some readers that Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself.
On Friday, Apple’s AI inaccurately summarised BBC app notifications to claim that Luke Littler had won the PDC World Darts Championship hours before it began – and that the Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal had come out as gay.
This marks the first time Apple has formally responded to the concerns voiced by the BBC about the errors, which appear as if they are coming from within the organisation’s app.
“These AI summarisations by Apple do not reflect – and in some cases completely contradict – the original BBC content,” the BBC said on Monday.
“It is critical that Apple urgently addresses these issues as the accuracy of our news is essential in maintaining trust.”
The BBC is not the only news organisation affected.
In November, a ProPublica journalist highlighted, external erroneous Apple AI summaries of alerts from the New York Times app suggesting it had reported that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested.
A further, inaccurate summary of a New York Times story appears to have been published on January 6, relating to the fourth anniversary of the Capitol riots.
The New York Times has declined to comment.
RSF said the false, AI-generated headline about Mr Mangione in December showed “generative AI services are still too immature to produce reliable information for the public”.
On Tuesday, it said Apple’s plan to update the feature to clarify when notifications are summarised with AI to users “doesn’t fix the problem at all”.
“It just transfers the responsibility to users, who – in an already confusing information landscape – will be expected to check if information is true or not,” said Vincent Berthier, head of RSF’s technology and journalism desk.