Apple brought AI notification summaries for news and entertainment apps back to Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhones when the company released iOS 26 in September 2025. Apple disabled these summaries in early 2025 after the BBC pointed out in December 2024 that the feature twisted the media organization's notifications and displayed inaccurate information.
What's different about these summaries in iOS 26 is that your device's settings warn you that the summaries might be inaccurate. Your device will note that you should verify the information in these summaries, and the best way I can think of to do that is to tap into the notification and read the story. This might defeat the purpose of the summaries for some people, but it could also ensure people read past a headline.
You have to enable AI summaries on your device. If you do, here's what to know about them and how to turn them back off.
iOS 26 warns about summary inaccuracies
After I updated to iOS 26, I was greeted by some splash screens asking for various permissions. One splash screen was for the AI notification summaries. When you see this screen, you have two options: Choose Notifications to Summarize or Not Now. If you tap Not Now, the splash screen goes away.
If you tap Choose Notifications to Summarize, you're taken to a new page where you'll see three categories: News & Entertainment, Communication & Social and All Other Apps. Tapping one of these categories allows notification summaries for apps in that category. Beneath the News & Entertainment category, there's a warning that gets outlined in red if you tap it.
"Summarization may change the meaning of the original headline," the warning reads, adding, "Verify information."
There's also a warning across the bottom of the screen that reads, "This is a beta feature. Summaries may contain errors."
After tapping the categories you want, tap Summarize Selected Notifications across the bottom of your screen. If you selected all the categories, this button will read Summarize All Notifications.
And if you don't want these summaries, you can tap Do Not Summarize Notifications. If you allow these summaries and don't like them, you can easily turn them off. Here's how.
How to turn off AI notification summaries
1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Notifications.
3. Tap Summarize Notifications.
4. Tap the Summarize Notifications toggle.
Now you won't see any summarized notifications. And if you want to turn AI notification summaries back on, follow the above steps again. You'll have to select which categories you want these summaries for again, too.
For more iOS news, here's what to know about iOS 26.5 and iOS 26.4. You can also check out our iOS 26 cheat sheet for other tips and tricks.
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