• Apple is facing backlash over one of its new Apple Intelligence features in iOS 18.2.
• The feature meant to summarize iPhone notifications inaccurately summarized some news alerts.
• Nonprofit Reporters Without Borders has called for Apple to remove the generative AI feature.

Apple is facing backlash over one of its newest generative AI features.

The feature, available in the latest iOS 18.2 update, summarizes groups of notifications from an app on a user's iPhone to give them a quick rundown of what they missed at a glance.

Users, however, have pointed out at least two instances of it providing inaccurate information when attempting to summarize notifications from news organizations.

In one case, the summary falsely claimed the BBC reported that Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had killed himself. Mangione is alive and was extradited to New York on Thursday.

In another instance, the feature wrongly summarized a New York Times article to say that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been arrested. The NYT article actually reported that the International Criminal Court had issued a warrant for Netanyahu's arrest, not that he had been arrested.

The nonprofit Reporters Without Borders has called on Apple to remove the feature.

"AIs are probability machines, and facts can't be decided by a roll of the dice," said Vincent Berthier, the head of the group's technology and journalism desk, in a public statement this week. "The automated production of false information attributed to a media outlet is a blow to the outlet's credibility and a danger to the public's right to reliable information on current affairs."

Apple, the BBC, the NYT, and Reporters Without Borders did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

A spokesperson from the BBC previously said the organization has filed a complaint with Apple "to raise this concern and fix the problem."

"It is essential to us that our audiences can trust any information or journalism published in our name and that includes notifications," the spokesperson previously said.

The mobile security company said it detected Pegasus spyware attacks on seven iPhone owners, including government officials and a business leader.

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• Huawei is set to launch its new line of Mate 70 phones on Tuesday.
• Its software and hardware have been developed with domestic expertise.
• It marks a new era of self-sufficiency at a moment of tech division between the US and China.

Look no further than Huawei to get a sense of just how far apart the US and China are heading into a second Donald Trump presidency.

On Tuesday, the Shenzhen-based tech giant is set to unveil a slate of new smartphones — the Mate 70 series — that will be the most free they have ever been of Western software and hardware.

During his first term in the White House, the president-elect moved to block what he saw as a national security threat by wielding export controls and an executive order to cut the Chinese firm's ties to crucial US partners and suppliers.

President Joe Biden's outgoing administration continued this approach, which meant Huawei had to look closer to home for chips, operating systems, and apps.

This term, Trump will stare down a Huawei that's showing it's doing just fine without its US suppliers.

On the software side, all lingering remains of Huawei's former dependence on Android look set to be excised on the Mate 70 devices as they launch with HarmonyOS Next, an operating system built to run apps specific to Huawei's system.

Huawei first launched HarmonyOS in 2019 after being cut off from Google's powerful Android system. Early versions of the platform contained code from the Android Open Source Project, but HarmonyOS Next removes it all, making it a product solely of Huawei's own making.

Meanwhile, on the hardware side, Huawei is looking to raise the bar on performance by introducing a new made-in-China smartphone chip in some of the new Mate 70 models, according to the Wall Street Journal.

A performance leap with a domestic chip would be a big deal. The top-end version of the Mate 70 predecessor — the Mate 60 — stunned policymakers last year as its launch showed off capabilities that were once only possible to accomplish with equipment sourced in the US.

The Mate 60's pro model was reported to have an advanced chipset called Kirin 9000s, designed by Shenzhen-based HiSilicon and manufactured by state-backed semiconductor firm SMIC. It gave the phone 5G-like cellular capabilities, per a teardown by Bloomberg.

Together, the software and hardware advances are a symbolic moment that shows how little effect efforts in Washington have had on squeezing a company dubbed a "national champion" by Beijing's mandarins since the 1990s.

Bad news for Apple

This growing self-sufficiency isn't going unnoticed.

Apple, which considers China its most important international market beyond the US, has seen iPhone sales suffer in the region as local consumers have gravitated toward handsets that are aggressively priced and give them a sense of national pride.

According to figures from research firm Counterpoint, Huawei held an 18% share of the Chinese smartphone market in the third quarter of this year, while Apple had a 14% share. Depending on the success of the Mate 70 phones, that gap could widen in the months ahead.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, for his part, wants to ensure that Chinese consumers remain dedicated to the iPhone maker, which has sold its smartphones there since 2009. This week, he is visiting the country for at least a third time this year to attend an industry conference.

During his trip, he will be acutely aware that iPhones face stiff competition in China. Back in 2009, no Chinese company had an answer to Steve Jobs' creation, and even if they did, they'd need to package it up with US technology. Huawei's Tuesday launch could well change that.