Apple’s Latest IOS Beta Quietly Kills AI News Notifications
As someone who is inundated with emails and messages throughout the day, one of the Apple Intelligence features I was most cautiously optimistic about was notification summaries. This feature aims to make sorting lock screen pings neater and faster by grouping multiple notifications from the same app together and quickly summing them up. Unfortunately, it looks like the feature isn’t quite ready yet, as the BBC has complained to Apple that notification summaries are generating false headlines for its news. Now, with the release of iOS 18.3 beta 3 , Apple is giving up its involvement in this feature and making it easier to opt out of it entirely.
No AI summaries for news apps
Perhaps it’s a response to reports like the BBC’s, or perhaps it’s a coincidence, but the biggest change to notification summaries in the latest iOS 18.3 beta is that they’re being paused for news and entertainment apps. If you try to turn on notification summaries for a news app, iOS will tell you that the setting is “temporarily unavailable,” although you can still turn it on to start receiving summaries when they’re turned back on.
Considering that notification summaries previously sent users something similar to the BBC’s official warning that United Healthcare shooting suspect Luigi Mangione had shot himself when the newspaper first mentioned the “explosion of anger,” that’s probably for the best.
More direct warnings about hallucinations
The notification summary settings page now also explicitly tells users that “summaries may contain errors,” whereas previously it only said that “summary accuracy may vary depending on the content.” Both options are technically correct, although the first is more straightforward.
To that end, when you first set up notification summary, Apple will now also tell you: “This beta feature will occasionally make errors that may distort the meaning of the original content.” Yes, even the version of notification summaries present in the current public build of iOS is considered a beta version.
Notifications written by AI will look different
It really should have been there at launch. To indicate that the notification is an AI-written summary and not the original, notification summaries will now be in italics. Previously, the only real indication that a notification was a summary was a small icon to the left of the summary, indicating that multiple notifications were being summarized and grouped together.
You can turn off any app’s notification summary in the notification banner.
Previously, the only way to turn off notification summary after setting it up was to dive into the Settings app, where you could either turn off the feature entirely or on an app-by-app basis. In the beta, you can now turn off the notification summary instead by swiping down from the top of the home screen and viewing notification banners, but only on a per-app basis.
To do this, swipe left on any app’s notification banner, tap Settings , and select Turn off [app name] summaries . You can also rate the accuracy of a summary from this menu by giving it a thumbs up or thumbs down.
If you want to try notification summaries but didn’t turn them on when you first set up Apple Intelligence , you can do so in Settings > Notifications > Notification Summary .
How to install iOS 18.3 beta 3
While the updated Notification Summary feature will be coming to all compatible iPhones running the final version of iOS 18.3, you can try it out right now. To install the current iOS 18.3 beta, first make sure you have a compatible phone , and then double-check that you’ve enrolled your iPhone in Apple’s beta program at beta.apple.com . From here, simply open your iPhone and go to Settings > General > Software Update > Beta Updates . If you’re also enrolled in the Developer Beta program (you don’t have to), here you’ll be able to choose between the iOS 18 Developer Beta or the iOS 18 Public Beta , but either will work if you only see one . Make your selection, then tap Back and download iOS 18.3 Beta 3 when it appears on your screen.
Please note that beta versions tend to have more bugs than final builds, so download this update to your primary device at your own risk.