Key Takeaways
- On Tuesday, iPhone customers seen that always after they mentioned the phrase “racist,” it was transcribed to “Trump” by the telephone’s voice-to-text software program.
- Apple has addressed the problem and blamed it on a glitch that makes it tough for the AI to distinguish between phrases containing “r” and having a phonetic overlap.
- Nevertheless, specialists are of the opinion {that a} phonetic overlap between these two phrases is simply not attainable.
- Nonetheless, Apple has began fixing the problem.
iPhone customers have been in for a shock on Tuesday when their telephone’s voice-to-text function out of the blue began swapping the phrase “racist” with Trump” briefly earlier than correcting it to racist once more.
Though the glitch is just not occurring each time you say the phrase “racist,” it’s nonetheless a delicate difficulty given the present political tensions throughout the nation after Trump’s elections.
Apple has addressed the glitch and mentioned that it’s attributable to a bug that they’re engaged on to repair.
We’re conscious of a problem with the speech recognition mannequin that powers Dictation and we’re rolling out a repair at the moment – Apple spokesperson
Apparently, the Dictation service was going through points distinguishing between phrases containing “r” due to the phonetic overlap. Nevertheless, the corporate didn’t elaborate on why the phrase “racist” was all the time confused with “Trump.”
Is This Actually an Sincere Mistake?
Whereas this may appear to be an trustworthy mistake on the floor, speech recognition specialists are of the opinion that phonetic overlap couldn’t be the explanation behind this swap.
Peter Bell, a professor of speech expertise on the College of Edinburgh, mentioned that though the 2 phrases comprise the letter “r,” they’re not phonetically comparable sufficient to confuse the AI. It’s extra possible that somebody deliberately tweaked the underlying software program to make this swap.
This comes at a time when there’s already lots of pressure between Trump and Apple.
- Firstly, Trump determined to impose an further 10% tax on all the products imported from China. Since most of Apple’s merchandise are manufactured in China, it might be a catastrophe for the corporate.
- That is possible what prompted Apple to announce a large $500 billion funding within the US. The tech big plans to create new amenities and develop present ones.
Word: Apple didn’t explicitly say that the elevated taxes are the explanation behind its funding. Nevertheless, Trump feels that given the timing, there’s no different believable clarification.
The second difficulty is relating to the DEI (variety, fairness, and inclusion). After Trump got here to energy, he determined to dismantle all DEI initiatives and packages. Nevertheless, throughout a current assembly, Apple’s shareholders voted in opposition to scraping off DEI on the insistence of the board members.
CEO Tim Cook dinner mentioned that their intention is to create an setting the place everybody can ship their greatest. Therefore, Apple will likely be holding the DEI framework. Nonetheless, contemplating the brand new authorized panorama, they’ll in all probability should make some changes.
This angered Trump, who lashed out on the firm and mentioned that it ought to utterly ditch the DEI framework as a substitute of creating changes.
Appears like there’s sufficient motive for a disgruntled worker at Apple to tweak the software program and make it change the phrase “racist” with “Trump.” Nevertheless, within the absence of any proof, I assume we’ll have to stay to Apple’s model of the occasions.
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