Apple has confirmed it has an autocorrect glitch in its dictation that substitutes the name ‘Trump’ for the word ‘racist.’
Suppose someone told you a problem with dictation software wanted to substitute the name Trump whenever it heard the word racist? If you’re like me, you might say that would be one hell of an autocorrect glitch!
But that’s apparently what’s happening with Apple’s speech-to-text feature, according to some iPhone users. NBC News reported that those users claimed speaking the word racist into the voice-to-text feature briefly produces “Trump” before quickly switching to “racist.”
I tried it on my phone. It heard and typed out “racist.” There was no sign, even for an instant, of the current president’s last name.
I would be tempted to dismiss it as some screwball, nonsensical rumor. But then Apple actually confirmed that it was deploying a fix for the “bug” earlier this week. If it were complete nonsense, Apple would have no “fix” to deploy, would it?
NBC correspondent Austin Mullen was able to do a screen recording of it happening. You can’t hear him, but he said when he said “racist,” “Trump” did briefly appear:
I also tested voice-to-text on iPhone, speaking the word “racist.” For a brief moment, it switches the word to “Trump,” and then BACK to “racist.” pic.twitter.com/sbng2vFLRm
— Austin C. Mullen (@austincmullen) February 25, 2025
This is too specific to be a random fluke
The two words don’t sound anything alike, certainly not enough alike for an artificial intelligence-based transcription software to confuse the two. I just can’t imagine it making that mistake. Over the past few years, Apple’s dictation on iPhone has gotten better and better. I rarely see it make mistakes at all.
NBC News reported this interesting note:
Apple said that sometimes, the speech recognition models powering the feature may first display words with some phonetic overlap until further analysis enables it to land on the actual word that the user intended to say. The tech company said that the bug has been erroneously suggesting “Trump” in response to several words that include an “r” consonant.
One might argue that since Trump may be the subject of plenty of messages — from either supporters or opponents — the software might be more likely to assume that any R sound might be part of Trump’s name.
And perhaps his name does briefly appear for a variety or words beginning with the letter R.
But it’s curious that racist seems to be the only one anyone has mentioned so far.
It almost suggests either a “prank” of some kind by programmers or a faux pas from an AI component that may have scanned a few too many articles and opinion pieces labeling Trump as a racist. (There are plenty of such accusations flying around, particularly since his termination of DEI programs which conveniently happened just before Black History Month began!)
I’m not generally a conspiracy theorist and I have been a longtime Apple user. I have no plans to change either stance. But this little autocorrect glitch — even a momentary one — seems a little too odd to be completely accidental.
