Table of Contents
- A Considered Approach for Android
- Learning from Apple’s Errors
A Considered Approach for Android
Fortunately, Android users will have the option to turn off notifications for applications they prefer not to receive summarized updates from. Analysis of the announcement indicates that this feature is intended to summarize notifications that involve conversational threads, such as messages, while excluding other types of app notifications.
This strategy proves to be well thought out and is likely to sidestep the chaos that followed the summarized notifications feature in Apple’s offerings. Summarizing notifications can serve as an effective way to keep up with lively discussions, whether among friends or colleagues.
Notably, neither Google nor Apple is the pioneer of summarizing notifications. The impressive Shortwave email application harnesses the capabilities of OpenAI’s GPT framework to effectively condense discussions within the inbox. However, summarized notifications are often criticized for lacking context, resulting in misleading summaries. For instance, I have observed how summaries from Microsoft Teams chats can amalgamate unrelated information, creating sentences that are convoluted and difficult to comprehend. It will be interesting to see if Google’s AI can perform better at distilling conversational notifications.
Learning from Apple’s Errors
Apple’s approach to notifications has faced substantial backlash, including severe criticism from the BBC. One notable mishap involved a fabricated news summary that incorrectly claimed tennis star Rafael Nadal had come out as gay. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) highlighted this debacle, emphasizing that the AI technology underlying these summaries struggles to provide reliable and accurate news.
The head of RSF’s Technology and Journalism Desk expressed concerns: “RSF urges Apple to take responsibility by discontinuing this feature. The automated generation of false narratives tied to a media outlet damages its credibility and poses a risk to the public’s access to trustworthy information on current events.”
In response to ongoing missteps, Apple realized that its notification summary feature required significant refinement. Consequently, the company decided to disable the feature for news and entertainment applications. Additionally, Apple began italicizing the summarized text in notifications to distinguish it more clearly.
With the release of the third beta update for iOS 18.3, Apple incorporated language warning users that summarized notifications might sometimes contain inaccuracies. The setup message notes, “This beta feature may occasionally make errors that misrepresent the original content.”
As Android ventures into the realm of summarized notifications, my feelings are a blend of optimism and caution. On one hand, my interactions with Google’s Gemini have gone smoothly. On the other hand, other Google services, like AI summaries in Search, continue to struggle with fundamental inaccuracies, such as reporting the current year incorrectly.
