Apple is working on a fix after some users shared that the iPhone speech-to-text system typed the word “Trump” when they said “racist.” The tech company suggested the glitch occurred due to the Dictation service’s error in distinguishing between letters “t” and “r” in them.
What is Apple iPhone’s new word glitch?
Apple’s automatic transcription tool featured a confusing glitch for some users. A viral TikTok clip showed when an iPhone user said, “racist,” the dictation showed the word, “Trump” before changing it. The error does not occur for everyone. However, some users have recorded clips showing how “Trump” appeared on their iPhone screen briefly before fixing it to “racist.”
An Apple spokesperson commented on the issue, blaming phonetic overlap. They noted, “We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers Dictation, and we are rolling out a fix today,” the BBC reported.
Meanwhile, tech experts believe the error could not have been because of the “r” and “t” dictation errors. Peter Bell, professor of speech technology at the University of Edinburgh, said the error could have meant someone likely had tweaked the underlying software that the tool used.
John Burkey, the founder of Wonderrush.ai and a former employee of Apple’s Siri team, further claimed the dictation issue happened after an update to Apple’s servers. Burkey told The New York Times that the issue could have been more than just a technical error.
However, it is possible that a software code somewhere in Apple’s systems prompted iPhones to type the word “Trump” when someone said “racist.”
“This smells like a serious prank,” Burkey continued. “The only question is: Did someone slip this into the data or slip into the code?”
The current hiccup of Apple has reminded users of another Apple error revolving Donald Trump that occurred in 2018. Upon asking Siri, who is Donald Trump, it reportedly showed a picture of a man’s genitals. Experts suggested that some users changed the image of Trump’s official Wikipedia entry that caused the error.
Additionally, Apple has committed to improving their artificial intelligence system by investing $500bn in the US. The tech giant will also open a large data center in Texas to further work on Apple Intelligence.
Originally reported by Arpita Adhya on ComingSoon.
