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AII-1002-57077
Well documentedThree or more independent publishers report the core facts.Supporting sources are pending verification.

Apple dictation system briefly shows "Trump" for "racist"

Apple's voice-to-text dictation system briefly displayed "Trump" when users said "racist" in February 2025, before autocorrecting to the intended word. The company attributed the glitch to phonetic overlaps in speech recognition, though experts questioned whether software or training data changes were responsible.

February 2025 Β· Apple Β· Reliability and hallucination
February 2025
AII-1002-57077
Quick facts
Organization
Apple (subject)
Category
Reliability and hallucination
Country
United States
Date
February 2025
Drafted by
Raidu Incident Detection

What happened

Users of Apple's voice-to-text feature reported that saying "racist" caused the system to momentarily display "Trump" before autocorrecting to the intended word.

The issue went viral on social media and raised concerns about the reliability of Apple's AI technology.

Reported impact

The glitch proved an embarrassing error for Apple, potentially undermining trust in its AI systems and fueling political tensions.

Index analysis

Apple attributed the glitch to phonetic overlaps in its speech recognition model, where similar sounds led to incorrect intermediate suggestions.

Experts questioned this explanation, suggesting it might stem from deliberate changes in the software or data used to train the system.

Classification

Organization
Apple (subject)
Category
Reliability and hallucination
Country
United States
Harm status
Potential harm
Intent
Unintentional
Timing
Post-deployment
Harm types
Reputational
Harmed
Business
Failure modes
Hallucination, Misidentification
Consequences
None recorded
AI systems
Apple Voice Dictation

Sources and evidence

Sources not yet published

This record was researched and written by the Index from original reporting. Its sources are still being verified by an editor, and they are listed here once that check is complete. Until then the record carries no reviewer.

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