An artificial intelligence feature on iPhones is generating fake news alerts, stoking concerns about the technology’s ability to spread misinformation.
Last week, a feature recently launched by Apple that summarizes users’ notifications using AI, pushed out inaccurately summarized BBC News app notifications on the broadcaster’s story about the PDC World Darts Championship semi-final, falsely claiming British darts player Luke Littler had won the championship.
The incident happened a day before the actual tournament’s final, which Littler did go on to win.
Then, just hours after that incident occurred, a separate notification generated by Apple Intelligence, the tech giant’s AI system, falsely claimed that Tennis legend Rafael Nadal had come out as gay.
The BBC has been trying for about a month to get Apple to fix the problem. The British state broadcaster complained to Apple in December after its AI feature generated a false headline suggesting that Luigi Mangione, the man arrested following the murder of health insurance firm UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York, had shot himself — which never happened.
Apple was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC. On Monday, Apple told the BBC that it’s working on an update to resolve the problem by adding a clarification that shows when Apple Intelligence is responsible for the text displayed in the notifications. Currently, generated news notifications show up as coming directly from the source.
“Apple Intelligence features are in beta and we are continuously making improvements with the help of user feedback,” the company said in a statement shared with the BBC. Apple added that it’s encouraging users to report a concern if they view an “unexpected notification summary.”
The mistake was flagged on the social media app Bluesky by Ken Schwencke, a senior editor at investigative journalism site ProPublica.
CNBC has reached out to the BBC and New York Times for comment on Apple’s proposed solution to its AI feature’s misinformation issue.
AI’s misinformation problem
Apple touts its AI-generated notification summaries as an effective way to group and rewrite previews of news app notifications into a single alert on a users’ lock screen.
It’s a feature Apple says is designed to help users scan their notifications for key details and cut down on the overwhelming barrage of updates many smartphone users are familiar with.
However, this has resulted in what AI experts refer to as “hallucinations” — responses generated by AI that contain false or misleading information.
“I suspect that Apple will not be alone in having challenges with AI-generated content. We’ve already seen numerous examples of AI services confidently telling mistruths, so-called ‘hallucinations’,” Ben Wood, chief analyst at tech-focused market research firm CCS Insights, told CNBC.
In Apple’s case, because the AI is trying to consolidate notifications and condense them to show only a basic summary of information, it’s mashed the words together in a way that’s inaccurately characterized the events — but confidently presenting them as facts.
“Apple had the added complexity of trying to compress content into very short summaries, which ended up delivering erroneous messages,” Wood added. “Apple will undoubtedly seek to address this as soon as possible, and I’m sure rivals will be watching closely to see how it responds.”
Generative AI works by trying to figure out the best possible answer to a question or prompt inserted by a user, relying on vast quantities of data which its underlying large language models are trained on.
Sometimes the AI might not know the answer. But because it’s been programmed to always present a response to user prompts, this can result in cases where the AI effectively lies.
It’s not clear exactly when Apple’s resolution to the bug in its notification summarization feature will be fixed. The iPhone maker said to expect one to arrive in “the coming weeks.”
The company said it expects third-quarter earnings between $1.36 and $1.60 per share, a midpoint of $1.48 per share. That fell short of an LSEG estimate of $1.50.
Texas Instruments anticipates revenues between $4.45 billion and $4.48 billion. The midpoint of $4.63 billion was slightly ahead of the $4.59 billion expected by analysts.
In an earnings call with analysts, CEO Haviv Ilan said the company is experiencing a “shallow” recovery in the automotive sector and said customers may have lingering worries over tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty.
Read more CNBC tech news
Despite the post-earnings slump, Texas Instruments posted a 16% year-over-year jump in revenue. The company reported earnings of $1.41 per share on $4.45 billion in revenue, surpassing the earnings of $1.35 per share on $4.36 billion in revenue expected by LSEG analysts.
Ilan said that some of the second-quarter strength may have come from a pull forward in demand to acquire inventory ahead of tariffs.
Net income for the company rose 15% to $1.3 billion, or $1.41 per share, from $1.13 billion, or $1.22 per share, a year ago.
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of SpaceX and Tesla, attends the Viva Technology conference at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, June 16, 2023.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
Tesla will report second-quarter results after the close of regular trading on Wednesday.
Here’s what Wall Street expects, according to an average of estimates compiled by LSEG:
Earnings per share: 43 cents
Revenue: $22.74 billion
Revenue in the period is expected to drop 11% from a year earlier, marking a second straight quarterly decline. In early July, Tesla reported a 14% year-over-year slide in vehicle deliveries to 384,000 for the second quarter.
Deliveries are the closest approximation of EV sales reported by Tesla but aren’t precisely defined in its shareholder communications.
Tesla’s slump this year is partly due to a backlash against the company in the U.S. and Europe, after CEO Elon Musk spent heavily to help reelect President Donald Trump, endorsed Germany’s extreme anti-immigrant AfD party, and then led the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency. At DOGE, Musk helped to slash the federal workforce, roll back regulations, and eliminate USAID.
Other automakers saw their electric vehicle sales increase, eating away at Tesla’s market share during the second quarter.
General Motors’ U.S. sales of EVs rose 111% year-over-year to nearly 46,300 units in the period for an estimated market share of 16%, still far behind Tesla.
Musk’s political activism hasn’t been the only factor weighing on the brand.
Read more CNBC Tesla coverage
Tesla has put off the production of a more affordable “model 2” EV, while other automakers are now offering a greater variety of vehicles, and China-based competitors are selling affordable EVs with high-tech self-driving features as a standard rather than premium option.
Tesla shares are down about 17% for the year, the worst performance among tech’s megacaps. The Nasdaq is up more than 8% in 2025.
Musk has tried to keep fans and investors focused on Tesla’s future, which he envisions as being dominated by the company’s robotaxis, and humanoid Optimus robots. Musk sees Tesla’s robotaxis as working for their owners, making them money while they sleep. Optimus robots, he says, will be so sophisticated they can serve as factory workers or babysitters.
Tesla opened a diner and charging station in Los Angeles this week, where fans can see the Optimus robots at work on a simple task, slowly scooping popcorn. The company faces massive competition in robotics from developers including 1X Technologies, Agility Robotics, Apptronik, Boston Dynamics and Figure AI.
In June, Tesla began testing a robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, which operates in a limited area with a human valet on board. The service is accessible only to select riders, generally Tesla and Musk enthusiasts.
The robotaxi rollout is seen by bulls as a positive sign for the company, but Bank of America analysts cautioned in a recent report that it would have “immaterial financial ramifications” in the near term.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, meanwhile, has pressed Tesla for information about reported incidents where the vehicles appeared to violate traffic laws. In one incident, a Tesla robotaxi scraped a parked vehicle at a pizzeria parking lot in Austin, and in another, a robotaxi veered out of its lane briefly into oncoming traffic.
In a note earlier this month, Barclays analysts said Tesla has shown “weak fundamentals” heading into its earnings report. Still, shareholders have remained excited about Tesla’s “robotaxi narrative,” wrote the analysts, who have the equivalent of a hold rating on the stock.
Wednesday’s report will be the first for Tesla since Musk officially left his role in the Trump administration and immediately preceded to publicly slam the president, mostly for the Republicans’ spending package that he endorsed.
Musk has since promised to start a new political party in the U.S. which he calls The America Party.
One retail investor submitted an anonymous question via the Say platform, which Tesla uses ahead of earnings calls, to ask, “With Elon Musk now more publicly involved in U.S. politics through the new America Party, is Tesla taking any steps to manage potential risks, whether from shifting political alliances, regulatory perception, or public opinion?”
Most questions submitted to the platform sought updates from Tesla about its robotaxi test in Austin, self-driving ambitions and its plans for a more affordable EV model.
Tesla’s automotive gross margins are also likely to be in focus, along with commentary on how the company will weather Trump’s tariffs and the end of federal tax credits for EV buyers.
Company executives will host an earnings call with analysts at 5:30 p.m. ET.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at a Google I/O event in Mountain View, Calif., Tuesday, May 20, 2025.
Jeff Chiu | AP
Alphabet is set to report its second-quarter earnings after the bell Wednesday.
Here’s what analysts polled by LSEG are expecting:
Revenue: $93.94 billion
Earnings per share: $2.18
Wall Street is also watching these numbers in the report:
YouTube advertising revenue: $9.56 billion, according to StreetAccount
Google Cloud revenue: $13.11 billion, according to StreetAccount
Traffic acquisition costs (TAC): $14.18 billion, according to StreetAccount
Alphabet is among the megacaps expected to be a major driver of earnings growth during the second-quarter earnings season. Wall Street is anticipating the search giant to report a 10.9% increase in revenue and 15% growth in earnings per share.
Shares of Alphabet haven’t moved much this year, lagging the other Magnificent Seven stocks and the S&P 500. Investors are primarily concerned about the rise of artificial intelligence chatbots, which could impact Google’s ability to remain competitive in search.
During the second quarter, the search giant rolled out a number of new AI products.
At its annual Google I/O conference in May, Google announced a new subscription tier, called “Google AI Ultra,” that offers access to the company’s “cutting edge” AI features for $249.99 per month. Google also unveiled its return to the smart glasses market with a $150 million partnership with Warby Parker — the two companies said they plan to launch a series of smart glasses as soon as next year.
Google in May also announced a venture fund to invest in AI startups. As part of the “AI Futures Fund,” eligible startups will receive Googleinvestment, early access to AI models, and hands-on support from Google researchers, engineers and go-to-market specialists. They also get credits to use on Google Cloud.
Additionally in May, Google began testing the placement of its “AI Mode” product on its home page, directly beneath the Google search.
Earlier this month, OpenAI added Google to its list of suppliers, saying it expects to use the search company’s cloud infrastructure for its popular ChatGPT service. The announcement represented a win for Google, whose cloud unit is younger and smaller than those of Amazon and Microsoft.
Google made a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing it would bring in Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan and other top researchers at the artificial intelligence coding startup as part of a $2.4 billion deal that also includes licensing the company’s technology.
Internally, Google also made a number of personnel changes during the quarter.
The company added the new role of chief AI architect when it elevated Koray Kavukcuoglu from his position as Google DeepMind’s chief technology officer in June.
Google also made more workforce reductions by offering buyouts to U.S.-based employees across several of its divisions, including search, ads and commerce.
Alphabet made several strides with Waymo, its self-driving car unit, during the quarter.
Waymo reached 100 million “real world, fully autonomous miles” driven on public roads, the company said last week. Waymo also announced expansions into new markets.
In June, Waymo announced plans to drive vehicles manually in New York, marking the first step toward potentially cracking the largest U.S. city. In July, the company said it will do limited testing in Philadelphia and it began offering accounts for teens ages 14 to 17, starting in Phoenix.
The company also endured some less-flattering optics during the quarter.
In June, Google’s cloud suffered significant global outages knocking down or disrupting dozens of large internet services, including OpenAI and Shopify, among others.