Apple disables notification summaries for News & Entertainment apps in iOS 18.3 beta and makes other changes to summaries, including using italicized text

Apple released iOS 18.3 beta 3 to developers this afternoon. The update includes a handful of changes to the notification summaries feature of Apple Intelligence.

9to5Mac 2025-01-17 Chance Miller

Context & Ripple Effects

Notification summaries were among the Apple Intelligence features introduced with the initial iOS 18.1 rollout, following earlier betas that positioned Writing Tools and a Siri redesign as core parts of the package.

This beta narrows that feature for News & Entertainment while changing its presentation. The direction was subsequently reflected in the public iOS 18.3 release, which disabled AI summaries for news apps even as Apple Intelligence was enabled by default on supported devices.

First-order effects

News & Entertainment notifications will no longer receive Apple Intelligence summaries in the iOS 18.3 beta, returning users to the original notification text for those apps.
Apple adds italicized styling and other summary-interface changes, making AI-generated notification text more visibly distinct from source notifications.

Second-order effects

News and entertainment publishers lose a system-level compression layer for alerts, while Apple reduces the chance that a generated summary is treated as the publisher's own wording.
The category-specific withdrawal creates a stronger incentive for Apple to test and adjust summaries by use case rather than apply one notification treatment across all apps.

Third-order effects

If this pattern persists, consumer AI features will be deployed with finer-grained product controls for content categories where attribution and accuracy matter most.
The move points toward AI interfaces that label generated output more explicitly and can be limited or withdrawn without pausing the wider platform rollout.

The trend: Apple Intelligence is evolving from a broad OS-level launch into a more governed deployment in which sensitive content categories receive distinct safeguards and interface treatment.

Discussion

@kint Jason Kint on bluesky
Good job, Apple. This is the right move. If you discover you're helping to amplify and spread toxic sludge, you slow down and fix the issues. That's what differentiates you from the CEO in Menlo Park. www.cnn.com/2025/01/16/m... [image]
@elkmovie Michael Love on bluesky
I'm surprised it took so long for Apple's general counsel to make the extremely panicked phone call to Craig Federighi that prompted this change
@darylbaxter Daryl Baxter on bluesky
Disable Apple Intelligence next [embedded post]
@adsb.cc @adsb.cc on bluesky
Noooooo! My terrible mad libs headlines. [embedded post]
@jenvalentino Jennifer Valentino-DeVries on bluesky
They're listening! They're really listening! bsky.app/profile/tech... [embedded post]
@caseynewton Casey Newton on bluesky
As a huge fan of the terrible Apple Intelligence text message summaries, this news is devastating to me [embedded post]
@simonbs@mastodon.social @simonbs@mastodon.social on mastodon
Curious to see if Apple will ever be able to enable it for news apps again without providing developers an option to disable it entirely for their apps. — https://mastodon.social/...
@ChanceHMiller@mastodon.social Chance Miller on mastodon
iOS 18.3 beta 3 includes several changes for Apple Intelligence notification summaries: — Temporarily disabled for News & Entertainment apps. — Tweaked design with italicized text on the Lock Screen — Easier to turn summaries on/off — New warning that summaries “may contain e…
@betaprofiles @betaprofiles on x
In iOS 18.3 Beta 3, Apple temporarily disabled the Summarize Notifications feature for the News and Entertainment categories. It's now also labeled “BETA” and may contain errors. [image]
@firstadopter Tae Kim on x
LLMs on 8 gigabytes of RAM = dumb AI, aka Apple Intelligence Memory size is oxygen for AI intelligence
@ecommerceshares @ecommerceshares on x
@markgurman Local models won't run the way Apple presented the Apple Intelligence vision until we have 24Gb RAM on the phone. Before that there's simply no way. The whole model + all running apps need to be in memory and be able to manage long sustained workloads, at low heat.
@joannastern Joanna Stern on x
It's about time. Apple Intelligence notification summaries have been disabled for all news apps in iOS 18.3 Beta 3. Apple says it's working on improvements and will make them available in a future software update. [image]
@betaprofiles @betaprofiles on x
In iOS 18.3 Beta 3, notifications summarized by Apple Intelligence will be italicized to stand out from regular ones. [image]
@betaprofiles @betaprofiles on x
iOS 18.3 Beta 3 adds an option to quickly turn off the Summarize Notifications feature for a specific app directly from the Lock Screen. You can find this option by swiping left on a summarized notification and tapping “Options.” [image]
@ispeedtestos @ispeedtestos on x
iOS 18.3 Beta 3 scores in Geekbench lower compared to Beta 2 for me: Single-core: +1 point Multi-core: -7 points Metal: -9 points #iOS183DevBeta3 #iOS183DevBeta2 #Speedtest [image]
@zollotech Aaron Zollo on x
iOS 18.3 Beta 3 now warns that notification summaries may contain errors. [image]
@markgurman Mark Gurman on x
What people really want is for the feature to work properly and accurately, but I guess this will do for now.
r/technews r on reddit
Apple is pulling its AI-generated notifications for news after generating fake headlines

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