MacworldThe New York Times is reporting on a viral problem with Apples voice-to-text dictation feature, where some users have found that saying the word Racist causes the dictation to instead type Trump, which then corrects itself to the word Racist after a moment.A TikTok video showing the phenomenon is a week old, but others have shared similar stories. The New York Times claims it was able to replicate the problem several times; Macworld editors have not been able to. @user9586420191789 My dad sent me this video this morning. He told me his friend noticed that when he used speech to text and said racist, it briefly changed to Trump before changing back. Seems like subliminal messaging to me. I dont have an iPhone and my phone doesnt do it. #iphone #Trump #apple #elonmusk #fyp @Anna Matson @Aquarius_Waive @athena @David Gokhshtein @Doxielvr @Hello America @Jason Pargin, author @Jeffery Mead @Jeff Mead @Joe Pags Pagliarulo @J.D. Vance @Link Lauren @Tulsi Gabbard @user80861822781 original sound Jess White2260 Apple told the NYT that the problem was caused by phonetic overlap between the two words, and said Apple is working on a fix. That feels somewhat incredulous, as the two words do not sound very phonetically similar and there are certainly other words it could change to that are more similar. It also doesnt explain why it changes back. According to John Burkey, an AI developer who used to be on the Siri team at Apple and is still in contact with old colleagues, the problem began with an update to Apples AI servers. He says the fact that the word auto-corrects itself makes it seem as though its not bad training data, its deliberate code. He thinks it sounds like a very serious prank, something deliberately slipped into either the data or the code. This is a very public embarrassment for a company that has been in Trumps sights as president, and has gone out of its way to ingratiate itself to the Trump administration, with Tim Cook donating $1 million to Trumps inauguration and even sitting up on the dais with other VIPs as he was sworn in.
