Apple’s iPhone voice-to-text writes ‘Trump’ when user says ‘racist’

Apple’s iPhone voice-to-text feature has recently come under scrutiny after a viral TikTok video showcased a user saying the word “racist,” only to have it initially transcribed as “Trump” before reverting back to “racist.” This issue was further confirmed by Fox News Digital, which was able to replicate the same phenomenon multiple times. While the word “Trump” did not appear consistently when “racist” was spoken, it did show up intermittently, causing concern among users.

In addition to the “Trump” transcription anomaly, the voice-to-text feature also generated words like “reinhold” and “you” when “racist” was spoken, although most of the time it accurately transcribed the word correctly. Apple has acknowledged the issue and stated that they are working on a fix for the speech recognition model that powers Dictation. According to an Apple spokesperson, the bug affects words with an “r” consonant when dictated, leading to occasional discrepancies in transcription.

This incident is not the first time that technology has been embroiled in controversy over perceived biases. A similar situation arose with the Amazon Alexa virtual assistant, which was found to provide different responses when asked about reasons to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris compared to former President Donald Trump. Amazon quickly addressed the issue by implementing manual overrides for questions related to Harris within two hours of the video going viral.

During a briefing with the House Judiciary Committee, Amazon representatives explained that Alexa uses pre-programmed manual overrides to respond to certain prompts from users. The company admitted fault in this instance and apologized for the display of political bias, emphasizing their policy to prevent Alexa from having a political opinion or bias for or against any particular party or candidate. Following the incident, Amazon conducted an audit of its system and extended manual overrides to cover all candidates and various election-related prompts.

In conclusion, both Apple and Amazon have taken steps to rectify the issues with their voice-to-text and virtual assistant features, respectively. As technology continues to evolve, it is essential for companies to address and rectify any biases or inaccuracies that may arise to ensure fair and unbiased user experiences.