Apple iPhone voice recognition misidentifies 'racist' as 'Trump'
Apple's iPhone voice-to-text feature reportedly displayed "Trump" when users said the word "racist," causing viral social media reactions. Apple acknowledged the issue and stated it was working on a fix related to phonetic overlap in its speech recognition model.
What happened
iPhone's voice-to-text dictation feature displayed 'Trump' when users said the word 'racist', according to reports that became viral on TikTok.
The feature showed the incorrect word 'for scurt timp' (briefly) before reverting to the intended word 'racist'.
Reported impact
The incident sparked controversy and indignation on social media, particularly on TikTok where videos of the error went viral.
The error raised questions about Apple's AI capabilities and fueled claims from some commentators of political bias against conservative viewpoints at technology companies.
Index analysis
Apple attributed the error to phonetic overlap in its voice recognition model, stating the system was identifying words with similar consonant patterns including the letter 'r' before settling on the intended word.
Governance controls
Apple acknowledged the problem and stated: 'We are aware of an issue with the voice recognition model that powers dictation and we are implementing a solution as soon as possible.'
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.