Apple to patch embarrassing dictation bug

People who dictated messages on their phones in recent days and used the word “racist,” briefly saw the word “Trump” appear on screen.

This is demonstrated in a TikTok video. You can clearly hear the user say the word “racist.” At first, nothing happens and the word the user pronounces appears in the text message box.

When he tries a second time, the United States president’s name Trump shortly shows up on the screen when he says the word “racist.” Almost instantly his name disappears and changes back to what the user actually said.

It’s not clear how the error occurred, but Apple quickly acknowledged the problem. A company spokesman told Associated Press it will release a fix as soon as possible to resolve this problem.

The mistake couldn’t have come at a more inconvenient time. Apple CEO Tim Cook has recently been visiting President Trump more frequently to strengthen their relationship.

During his visits, they talked about major investments in the United States’ artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. Earlier this week Apple pledged it would spend up to $500 billion in the next four years, creating 20,000 new jobs in AI research and development. The investment includes a giant factory in Texas for storing AI servers.

Nasty dictation bugs like this one could jeopardize the close ties between Cook and Trump.

Apple has come across problems with voice assistants and AI more than once in the past. In 2018, there was controversy surrounding Siri because the assistant showed a nude image in response to a question about who Donald Trump is. That error was later blamed on a couple of Wikipedia editors who had edited the source from which Siri pulled information.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman recently reported that Apple’s AI overhaul of Siri is running into engineering problems and software bugs. Some new features that were planned for release in April may be postponed to May, or even later.

“Inside Apple, many employees testing the new Siri have found that these features don’t yet work consistently,” Gurman said.