back to article Apple called on to ditch AI headline summaries after BBC debacle

Press freedom advocates are urging Apple to ditch an "immature" generative AI system that incorrectly summarized a BBC news notification that incorrectly related that suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione had killed himself. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said this week that Apple's AI kerfuffle, which …

    1. Anonymous Coward
      1. Headley_Grange Silver badge

        I was going to write something along the lines of ....evidence that the "I" in AI is plain wrong because a real person would read the rock-eating advice and realize that it was crap...... and then I thought, "bleach".

        1. LBJsPNS Bronze badge

          Remember, there are humans who drive off of damaged bridges because they're blindly following their gps.

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "APPL shares tank after researchers confirm Chinese backdoor in all products since 2013"

    If Apple are allowed to push untrue content from their lying AI without any consequences everyone should be allowed to push untrue content from their lying BS generators without consequences

    if, in this post truth world, lies are free speech, and we have to put up with lies as alternative facts, we should embrace that, produce our own, take it to the extreme. It costs almost nothing compared to building an actual AI, it can be a few lines of python code, can run on a raspberry pi.

    Taking the moral high ground won't save us from this sinking ship of shit so we might as well help it hit rock bottom as soon as possible.

    1. Mentat74
      Trollface

      Re: "APPL shares tank after researchers confirm Chinese backdoor in all products since 2013"

      Here's some more fake headlines :

      "Tim Cook dead at age 56"

      "Apple to give away free Iphones for christmas at all Apple stores !"

      "Personal details of millions of Iphone users leaked on the dark web"

      "Tim Cook stepping down as CEO of Apple"

      "Tim Cook to legally change his name to Tim Apple"

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "APPL shares tank after researchers confirm Chinese backdoor in all products since 2013"

        Shirley you meant Pyne Apple .... ?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "APPL shares tank after researchers confirm Chinese backdoor in all products since 2013"

          Shirley you actually meant "Meth Cooke"

        2. gnasher729 Silver badge

          Re: "APPL shares tank after researchers confirm Chinese backdoor in all products since 2013"

          APPL (a small oil company) has been defunct for many years. The company you make stuff up about is traded as AAPL.

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: "APPL shares tank after researchers confirm Chinese backdoor in all products since 2013"

            That's what comes of trying to look clever by using an encoding instead of the name.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: "APPL shares tank after researchers confirm Chinese backdoor in all products since 2013"

            > The company you make stuff up about is traded as AAPL.

            No; the company I made up shit about was APPL and quite deliberately so. I have never made up any shit about Apple ... Your Honour, M'lud.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "APPL shares tank after researchers confirm Chinese backdoor in all products since 2013"

      Apple have forgotten there's no Section 230 protecting this. This is all on them, it's Apple which is publishing incorrect and inaccurate summaries of articles by other organisations which could bring them into disrepute. I wonder if the BBC could reach for the UK's famously restrictive libel laws.

    3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: "APPL shares tank after researchers confirm Chinese backdoor in all products since 2013"

      "if, in this post truth world, lies are free speech, and we have to put up with lies as alternative facts, we should embrace that, produce our own, take it to the extreme. It costs almost nothing compared to building an actual AI, it can be a few lines of python code, can run on a raspberry pi."

      Oh yeah, it's all true. I was just watching Youtube video the other day that Trump and his MAGAs are all repressed gays and rednecks have guns on the rack in their huge pickups because they all have tiny dicks. It MUST be true!!!

      1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

        Re: "APPL shares tank after researchers confirm Chinese backdoor in all products since 2013"

        That bit actually is mostly true.

      2. Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck

        Re: "APPL shares tank after researchers confirm Chinese backdoor in all products since 2013"

        Drumpf and company are too indiscriminate and tasteless to be gay. No self respecting gay individual would be caught dead with Musk or Drumpf's hair!

        No, for that crowd, it's "any orifice, any where, any time", I'm afraid. They have neither shame nor standards

  2. heyrick Silver badge

    glue cheese to pizza and eat rocks

    I stopped by a well known burger flinger on the way home from work because it's been a bit of a shit day and I just want to stare at the wall rather than get up off my arse and cook stuff.

    Arguably the cheese is some sort of yellow glue, and to be honest I'm thinking there might be more nutritional value in rocks. At least the chips were hot for a change. Hot chips are nice, cold chips (the usual kind) are a sort of grim that would be a torture in hell (you can have all the chips you want in the afterlife, but they're the cold congealed manky ones that should have been thrown out half an hour ago...).

    1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      Re: glue cheese to pizza and eat rocks

      IIRC those sorts of restaurants in France sell beer as well, so some things are still ok.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

        1. dangerous race
          Happy

          Re: Examples?

          'Look at the big brain on Lil Endian.'

  3. Ace2 Silver badge

    SWMBO asked one of these monstrosities to summarize a research paper on ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, for $WORK. The summary said that they are effective for treating COVID. That’s… not what the study said.

    The whole LLM thing needs to be scrapped. It’s a dead-end.

    1. stiine Silver badge
      Coffee/keyboard

      Its not a dead-end, its a roundabout.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        entrances but no exits? After all, a lot of this AI shit is coming out of California :-)

        1. StewartWhite Bronze badge
          Linux

          Indeed.

          "We are programmed to receive

          You can check out any time you like

          But you can never leave"

          Penguin icon as that's the nearest El Reg has to an eagle.

      2. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

        Re: The whole LLM thing is not a dead end, it’s a roundabout @stiine

        I prefer to imagine and do work within everything treating it as a black hole ..... sucking in anything and spewing it out elsewhere all jumbled up as something quite different engaging and entertaining or disturbing and terrifying dependent upon one’s future suspected worth ...... although who/what makes that decision is surely still a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; without a currently known or readily available master key.

    2. Mishak Silver badge

      "they are effective for treating COVID"

      Unfortunately, you could probably argue it was accurate if it had extended its "research" to the wider internet, as it would probably find more references stating they are effective than those that say not :-(

      Bleach anyone?

  4. JimmyPage
    Alert

    Eventually it will libel

    someone very rich.

    (We need a popcorn icon)

    1. StewartWhite Bronze badge
      Megaphone

      Re: Eventually it will libel

      True but the FAANG have deeper pockets than any individual and both the UK and the USA have "The best justice that money can buy".

  5. that one in the corner Silver badge

    Apple declined to comment ...

    Why should they comment? Other than to send a polite "Thank you" to the BBC for being so complimentary about Apple's services.

    At least, that is what the Apple PR flacks believe, after they read the Apple Intelligence summary of the Beeb's communication (hey, those are busy and important flacks, they don't have time to read it all themselves; those lunches won't eat themselves).

  6. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge
    Stop

    "This accident highlights the inability of AI systems..."

    It's not an accident. They didn't accidentally roll out a headline summary bot. They didn't accidentally fail to verify that an LLM was the right tool for the job. They didn't accidentally fail to check the bullshit output before publishing it.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: "This accident highlights the inability of AI systems..."

      Of course not! It was all the fault of a "rouge"[*] engineer!

      [*], sorry, just following what seems to have become an El Reg spelling tradition :-)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Disgusting of Apple to threaten jobs like this.

    The BBC is perfectly capable of generating inaccurate headlines on its own, thank you.

    1. navarac Silver badge

      Re: Disgusting of Apple to threaten jobs like this.

      The BBC is certainly NOT UNbiased, that is for sure. Far too WOKE these days.

      1. LBJsPNS Bronze badge

        Re: Disgusting of Apple to threaten jobs like this.

        Don't cry, dearie, you'll smear your makeup.

      2. jospanner Silver badge

        Re: Disgusting of Apple to threaten jobs like this.

        I shit my pants because of woke, it’s everyone’s fault but mine

        1. LBJsPNS Bronze badge

          Re: Disgusting of Apple to threaten jobs like this.

          "God damn it, which one of you bastards shit my pants again?!?!"

    2. ITMA Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Disgusting of Apple to threaten jobs like this.

      But the BBC does have to deal with the consequences:

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yd9j8j62go

  8. Howard Sway Silver badge

    New BBC News slogan

    "Who you gonna believe? Me or your lying AIs"

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: New BBC News slogan

      Take it from me that they’re working on their own AI implementations.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  9. jezza99

    I've switched off Apple Intelligence

    It doesn't pertain to this article directly, but I have found AI to just interfere with my work flow. I suddenly couldn't find emails, and it kept interrupting while I was composing messages.

    The thing with the current LLMs is that they give very confident answers, which may not may not be right. They will never respond "I don't know" or "I think this is right but you may want to fact check it". They don't show you their workings.

    Thus, I think they are pretty dangerous for anything which depends on factual accuracy.

  10. Winkypop Silver badge
    Pirate

    Bollocks ahoy Captain!

    It’s not the obvious inaccuracies you need to fear. They look after themselves, whist providing some mirth.

    It’s the minor inaccuracies that nobody checks that leads to the total decay of fact.

  11. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge
    Devil

    Adversarial training of corporations

    Somebody needs to craft innocuous articles that summarize similar to, "Apple overstated revenue by billions." Maybe Apple will turn AI off before their stock crashes, maybe not.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Adversarial training of corporations

      so you could write all sorts of libelous articles but not actually publish them. Just store them on your OneDrive and definitely not share them with anyone, so that nothing would ever read them from there...

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No chunk taken from my Apple

    Mine is complete with no missing chunk taken by Eve. And neither did my first computer cost $666.66. But then Im not a twat like them.

    F Apple with a broom handle prison-style.

  13. Donn Bly
    Coat

    Not an AI Problem

    This isn't an AI problem. Editors in news media have been creating "click-bait" headlines for shock value since long before the days of the Internet. How often have you picked up a newspaper or read an article from a mainstream news source where the headline contradicted the article that followed it? The only thing here is that computers are doing it faster, putting hard-working editors out of work.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: Not an AI Problem

      Bad headlines are nothing new, but these are probably still worse. Editors may pick headlines intended to mislead, that make bad summaries, or ones designed to make the article sound more interesting than it is, but they tend not to write headlines that diametrically oppose the article unless they didn't read it or confused one article with another. This bot did that all on its own with no pressure causing it to do so. That's likely to happen a lot more frequently than an editor making such a massive mistake.

      I've always wondered why they don't have the article authors write the headlines. At least in non-clickbaity examples, that should get an accurate summary in there. I suppose we've now solved that problem. The article and headline will be written by the same thing: an AI bot that made both of them up.

    3. Ianab

      Re: Not an AI Problem

      Click bait headline or not, the AI was supposed to summarize the actual article, to save you having to read it all yourself. If it made up an extended version of the click bait, then it failed at it's supposed task, which was the actual article content. It's sort opposite of a "useful" tool at that point, as now you have to actually read the article to double check what the "AI" told you about it.

      It's a basic problem with current AI, it creates a "word salad" by association of words and phrases. It creates plausible sounding sentences, but has zero actual understanding of the actual Real World.

      The Glue and Pizza possibly came about when it came across text that says, "Using mozzarella helps glue the other ingredients to the base". Now it associates the words "glue" with "pizza" when it mixes up it's word salad. Not very intelligent.

    4. Jellied Eel Silver badge

      Re: Not an AI Problem

      The only thing here is that computers are doing it faster, putting hard-working editors out of work.

      This is the problem with the MSM, and the challenges they face from alternative media. 'AI' editors can grammar and spell check articles, but can't reliably 'fact check' them. 'AI' journalists can ingest stories from wire services and massage them into stories, but can't 'fact check' them either. And 'AI' can't do one of the important things journalists should be doing, ie investigative journalism. But that takes time and money, so human journalists struggle to do that anyway. Governments are probably just fine with this, and journalists not being able to hold their feet to the fire.. And if they do, their stories can just be dismissed as 'fake news' if they contradict the official misinformation.

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