BBC complains to Apple over misleading shooting headline
BBC complains to Apple over misleading shooting headline
Getty Images Luigi Mangione is accused of murdering healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thompson
The BBC has complained to Apple after the tech giant's new iPhone feature generated a false headline about a high-profile murder in the United States. Apple Intelligence, launched in the UK earlier this week, uses artificial intelligence (AI) to summarise and group together notifications. This week, the AI-powered summary falsely made it appear BBC News had published an article claiming Luigi Mangione, the man arrested following the murder of healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thompson in New York, had shot himself. He has not. A spokesperson from the BBC said the corporation had contacted Apple "to raise this concern and fix the problem". Apple declined to comment.
A zoomed in iPhone screenshot of the misleading BBC notification
"BBC News is the most trusted news media in the world," the BBC spokesperson added. "It is essential to us that our audiences can trust any information or journalism published in our name and that includes notifications." The notification which made a false claim about Mangione was otherwise accurate in its summaries about the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria and an update on South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol. But the BBC does not appear to be the only news publisher which has had headlines misrepresented by Apple's new AI tech. On 21 November, three articles on different topics from the New York Times were grouped together in one notification - with one part reading "Netanyahu arrested", referring to the Israeli prime minister. It was inaccurately summarising a newspaper report about the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, rather than any reporting about him being arrested. The mistake was highlighted on Bluesky by a journalist with the US investigative journalism website ProPublica. The BBC has not been able to independently verify the screenshot, and the New York Times declined to comment to BBC News.
Ken Schwencke A screenshot of a group notification from the New York Times was also said to be misleading.
'Embarrassing' mistake
