Apple faces backlash over false AI news alert: ‘Luigi Mangione shoots himself’

The BBC has filed a complaint with Apple over the fake news alert that was shared on iPhones and falsely attributed to the broadcasting service.

Apple’s new AI service, Apple Intelligence, which was launched in the UK this week, aggregates notifications from various news sources using artificial intelligence.

One of these notifications incorrectly suggested that the BBC had published a story claiming Luigi Mangione, arrested in the US for the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week in New York, had died by suicide.

BBC subscribers received a message this week stating, “Luigi Mangione shoots himself.” However, the 26-year-old did not harm himself and is currently held in Pennsylvania, awaiting extradition to New York.

“BBC News is the most trusted news media in the world,” a BBC spokesperson stated. They added that they had raised concerns with Apple.

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

The BBC is not the only news outlet to have its headlines misrepresented by Apple’s new AI technology.

On November 21, Apple’s AI service grouped three unrelated articles from the New York Times into a single notification, one of which incorrectly read “Netanyahu arrested,” referring to the Israeli prime minister.

This was a mistake based on a report about the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, rather than actual news of his arrest.

The error was pointed out by a journalist from the US investigative journalism site ProPublica.