With our 24/7 news cycle, any information released can seemingly be everywhere at once. Maybe you’ve had the conversation where you ask someone if they heard about a new interesting news story yet. As you describe the story, the person stops you and says, “Oh that’s old news. I heard about it earlier.” Technology has truly enabled mass communication.

These days its hard to read the news and not hear something about Luigi Mangione, the alleged murderer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Interestingly, there are a number of technology related issues, including social media’s ground swell support for the accused instead of the victim, or the health industry embracing artificial intelligence to process claims. I hope to explore these issues in later posts. Today I want to focus on Apple’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) to write headlines. In particular, Apple released an incorrect headline that stated “Luigi Mangione shoots himself”.

The other headlines in the alert are correct, but the top one about Mangione was not. By the time I heard about this headline, it was obviously wrong. But what if you were one of the first to see this alert. With this being such a high profile news story, would you have shared the fake headline as truth?

The BBC has complained as the false headline was attributed to them. They also recently made another complaint about a false headline.

Maybe these headlines are easily proven wrong or not too important, but what happens if we end up in a situation where it isn’t so easily proven or is important?

AI is seen as an easy and inexpensive way to handle a number of tasks, including headline writing. But AI large language models (LLMs), likely powering Apple’s headline generator, are known to “hallucinate” or make up stuff.

Vincent Berthier from Reporters Without Borders released a statement about the controversy as it highlights a big concern for the media industry.

“AIs are probability machines, and facts can’t be decided by a roll of the dice. RSF calls on Apple to act responsibly by removing this feature. 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.”

Maybe for now Apple should just pass on actual headlines.