Apple has been under extreme pressure after iPhone users shared videos of the Apple speech-to-text tool transcribing the word “racist” to “Trump” momentarily. When users would activate the dictation feature and say the word “racist,” their device would show the word “Trump” before quickly changing to the correct word. Videos of this bug were posted via the social media platform, TikTok, and soon went viral.
This isn’t the first time Apple’s AI has failed to function correctly. Just last month, complaints from news sources such as BBC were made about Apple AI falsely summarizing the headlines of news articles.
The tech company replied to the blow-up of videos capturing the AI transcription’s mistake, suggesting that the issue was caused by a problem with the AI tool’s ability to distinguish between words including the letter “r.”
“We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers Dictation and we are rolling out a fix today,” said Apple in a statement to The Associated Press.
Tension between Apple and President Trump has been building since the removal of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in all corporations. Trump posted orders for Apple to eliminate the diversity program, writing, “Apple should get rid of DEI rules, not just make adjustments to them,” in all capital letters. Initially, the tech giant was resistant to the request, urging shareholders to reject Trump’s proposal.
Despite the company’s original reaction, Apple CEO Tim Cook soon came out with an announcement, explaining that the firm may face changes to their hiring processes “as the legal landscape evolves.”
Apple recently announced a $500 billion dollar investment into U.S technology over the next 4 years. The expenditure “will support a wide range of initiatives that focus on artificial intelligence, silicon engineering, and skills development for students and workers across the country.”
Discussion surrounding the increasingly popular technology corporation continues, with debates over whether the recent glitches have underlying meaning or are being overanalyzed.
