Apple’s iPhone voice-to-text feature sometimes displays “Trump” when users say the word “racist” into the microphone. The company claims it is aware of the “issue” and promises it is “rolling out a fix as soon as possible.”
Apple iPhone owners are recording videos of themselves using Apple’s voice-to-text feature, demonstrating that the smartphone briefly flashes “Trump” before switching back to the correct word they they say the word “racist” into the microphone. This is widespread and confirmed on multiple personal devices by Breitbart News.
Watch Below:
While the smartphone did not display “Trump” every time “racist” was said using the device’s voice-to-text feature in the above sample video, it did show the 45th and 47th president’s surname three out of five times the iPhone user said the word “racist.”
On Tuesday afternoon, Breitbart News was able to replicate the issue several times, seeing “Trump” flash briefly when “racist” was spoken into Apple’s voice-to-text tool, before eventually switching back to the correct word.
“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 Apple spokesperson told Fox News.
Apple reportedly went on to claim that its speech recognition models may temporarily display words with some phonetic overlap, before settling on the correct word, insisting the issue affects other words with an “r” consonant. This claim seems dubious as best given the quite different sound of “Trump” and “racist.”
This is not the first time a tech giant has faced backlash from users over its technology that was perceived to be attacking President Donald Trump.
As Breitbart News reported in September, an Amazon Alexa user discovered that the voice-enabled assistant provided an answer after being asked why someone should vote for then-Vice President Kamala Harris, but refused to answer the same question about Trump.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
