Apple Says It’s Fixing iPhone Dictation Bug That Hears ‘Racist’ When Someone Says ‘Trump’

variety.com:

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor An Apple dictation feature for the iPhone has been mistakenly transcribing “racist” as “Trump,” an issue that came to light after users posted about the issue on TikTok and social media. “We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers Dictation and we are rolling out a fix today,” an Apple rep said in a statement Tuesday.

Users who posted about the problem found that the iPhone’s dictation feature would briefly show “Trump” when a user said “racist” before correctly switching to “racist.” According to Apple, the speech-recognition feature may temporarily display words with some phonetic overlap before landing on the correct word.

Apple says it’s addressing the bug, which erroneously suggests the word “trump” when users dictate some words that also include an “r” consonant.

Tests with iPhone’s Dictation indicate that other words that can produce “trump” include “ramp,” “rhubarb,” “rhythmic” and “ruffles.” A tech controversy involving Trump and VP Kamala Harris cropped up last fall, prior to the 2024 election.