Apple is fixing a voice dictation bug that substitutes ‘Trump’ for ‘racist’
Apple has acknowledged a peculiar bug with the iPhone's dictation feature that briefly displays Trump" when someone says the word racist." The Verge has been unable to reproduce the issue, but it picked up attention on Tuesday after a video demonstrating the strange substitution went viral on TikTok and other social media.
The company provided a statement to The New York Times and Fox News confirming the bug. We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers dictation, and we are rolling out a fix as soon as possible," an unnamed spokesperson said, according to Fox News.
@user9586420191789My 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 don't have an iPhone and my phone doesn't 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
Apparently the issue boils down to phonetic overlap between Trump" and racist." The company told Fox News that other words with an r" consonant are also occasionally affected. But John Burkey, who formerly worked on the Siri team at Apple, told the Times that Trump's name appearing smells like a serious prank" that could have been purposefully carried out by someone internally.
Regardless of the technical reason behind it, the awkward glitch comes a day after Apple announced plans to invest more than $500 billion in the United States over the next four years. The company is looking to blunt the potential impact of tariffs put into place by President Donald Trump, with a10 percent tariff already in effecton goods imported from China, and a25 percent tariff threatenedfor chips.