Even Apple doesn’t think Notification Summaries work properly

Summary

Apple is temporarily disabling its AI notification summaries feature for news and entertainment apps in iOS 18.3.
The BBC complained to Apple about its AI notification summaries after the feature put out several misleading headlines.
Notification summaries for news and entertainment apps will return in a future software update.

Since Apple launched Apple Intelligence last year, its AI notification summaries have been intensely scrutinized. Most notably, the BBC published a scathing report on the AI feature after it generated several misleading headlines. Now, Apple is finally taking action on the matter.

With iOS 18.3, Apple has made several changes to notification summaries. The biggest is that it has temporarily disabled the feature for news and entertainment apps. This means that if you have a news app on your iPhone, like the BBC or CNN, Apple Intelligence will no longer produce AI notification summaries for it.

Apple’s AI summaries are hilariously bad sometimes

iOS 18’s new AI notification summaries are an amusing disaster, and I never want to turn the feature off again.

Notification summaries for news will return

Apple is working on refining the feature for a future update

After the BBC complained to Apple about its AI notification summaries, the Cupertino-based company released a statement saying that “Apple Intelligence features are in beta” and that it is “continuously making improvements with the help of user feedback.” It seems Apple decided the best course of action is to temporarily disable the feature for news while it works on a fix, which will come in a future software update.

Since the launch of iOS 18.1, Apple’s notification summaries have been criticized on social media. Even the team here at Pocket-lint have experienced some questionable AI summaries. If you don’t want to wait for the release of iOS 18.3, you can disable notification summaries in the Settings app.

Apple is introducing several other changes to notification summaries with the update, such as clearly labeling in settings that the feature is in beta and that it “may contain errors.” The update also allows you to disable notification summaries for a particular app from your lock screen or notification center rather than having navigate to the Settings app. iOS 18.3 is currently in developer beta, with a public beta and launch expected in the near future.