Apple Intelligence AI News Summaries Return in iOS 26

The latest iOS 26 update is filled with a surprising number of upgrades for Apple Intelligence. Among them is the return of what might be the most controversial AI feature Apple has ever released: automated notification summaries for News and Entertainment apps.

The Controversy Behind AI News Summaries

Artificial intelligence is a field often surrounded by controversy, from ethical questions about how models are trained to anxieties over job displacement and the spread of deepfakes and misinformation. When Apple Intelligence debuted last year, it seemed to sidestep most of these major issues. For instance, its AI image creation tool, Image Playground, was launched with guardrails that successfully prevented the kind of public relations disasters made by other companies. However, one feature did cause a significant stir: notification summaries for news.

BBC News, in particular, took issue with the feature after Apple's AI tools generated incorrect summaries of their content. In one especially egregious case, a notification summary falsely claimed that Luigi Mangione had shot himself, and incorrectly attributed that false statement to the BBC.

In response to this and other errors, Apple chose to disable notification summaries completely for all News and Entertainment apps. The Entertainment category was likely included because apps like Podcasts and YouTube can often push notifications with news-style headlines. But now, with the release of iOS 26, the feature is back.

What's New with Summaries in iOS 26

Apple has been relatively quiet about the specific technical changes made to news summaries in iOS 26. However, the company is clearly confident enough in the improvements to re-enable the feature for everyone.

It appears the underlying AI models for summarization have been updated to make the previous errors less likely. Additionally, Apple has made UI changes to be more transparent about the feature's limitations. For example, when you first enable summaries for News and Entertainment apps, a warning in red text appears to alert you of possible errors. You will also notice a new 'Summarized by Apple Intelligence' footer in these notifications.

So far, in the month since the feature was re-enabled (plus the time it was available in the iOS 26 beta), the new notification summaries seem to be performing much better.

With strong sales of the iPhone 17 and the time that has passed since January, the number of AI-capable devices in use has grown significantly. Despite this larger user base, there have been virtually no reports of AI summaries causing controversy in iOS 26.

Anecdotally, the summaries have been far more accurate overall. In iOS 18, I would see about one incorrect summary per week across all my apps. In the months since the feature returned, I can’t recall seeing a single error. It's a positive sign for a feature I originally found to be one of the most useful AI tools available.

How have iOS 26’s notification summaries been working for you? Do they seem more accurate than before? Let us know in the comments.

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