The BBC has complained to Apple after the tech giant’s recent iPhone characteristic generated a untrue headline about a high-profile murder in the United States.

Apple Intelligence, launched in the UK earlier this week, uses artificial intelligence (AI) to summarise and throng together notifications.

This week, the AI-powered summary falsely made it appear BBC information had published an piece claiming Luigi Mangione, the man arrested following the murder of healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thompson in recent York, had shot himself. He has not.

A spokesperson from the BBC said the corporation had contacted Apple “to raise this concern and fix the issue”.

Apple declined to comment.

“BBC information is the most trusted information media in the globe,” the BBC spokesperson added.

“It is essential to us that our audiences can depend any information or journalism published in our name and that includes notifications.”

The notification which made a untrue claim about Mangione was otherwise accurate in its summaries about the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and an update on South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.

But the BBC does not appear to be the only information publisher which has had headlines misrepresented by Apple’s recent AI tech.

On 21 November, three articles on different topics from the recent York Times were grouped together in one notification – with one part reading “Netanyahu arrested”, referring to the Israeli prime minister.

It was inaccurately summarising a newspaper update about the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, rather than any reporting about him being arrested.

The mistake was highlighted on Bluesky by a journalist with the US investigative journalism website ProPublica.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify the screenshot, and the recent York Times declined to comment to BBC information.

Apple says one of the reasons people might like its AI-powered notification summaries is to assist reduce the interruptions caused by ongoing notifications, and to allow the user to prioritise more significant notices.

It is only available on sure iPhones – those using the iOS 18.1 structure version or later on recent devices (all iPhone 16 phones, the 15 Pro, and the 15 Pro Max). It is also available on some iPads and Macs.

Prof Petros Iosifidis, a professor in media policy at City University in London, told BBC information the mistake by Apple “looks embarrassing”.

“I can view the pressure getting to the economy first, but I am surprised that Apple put their name on such demonstrably half-baked product,” he said.

“Yes, potential advantages are there – but the technology is not there yet and there is a real danger of spreading disinformation.”

The grouped notifications are marked with a specific icon, and users can update any concerns they have on a notification summary on their devices. Apple has not outlined how many reports it has received.

Apple Intelligence does not just summarise the articles of publishers, and it has been reported the summaries of emails and text messages have occasionally not quite hit the mark.

And this is not the first period a large tech corporation has discovered AI summaries do not always work.

In May, in what Google described as “isolated examples”, its AI Overviews tool for internet searches told some users looking for how to make cheese stick to pizza should consider using “non-toxic glue”.

The search engine’s AI-generated responses also said geologists recommend humans eat one rock per day.