Apple responds after iPhone users expose phone for turning the word ‘racist’ into ‘trump’
Topics: Donald Trump, Politics, US News, Apple, Technology
Lucy Devine
Featured Image Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/Apple
Topics: Donald Trump, Politics, US News, Apple, Technology
Apple has promised to fix a glitch in its dictation tool which is suggesting the word 'Trump' when users say the word 'racist'.
The bug has been widely shared on social media with people outraged over the error.
One person posted a video over on TikTok, writing: "My dad sent me this video this morning. He told me his friend noticed that when he used speech to text and said 'racist,' it briefly changed to 'Trump' before changing back.
"Seems like subliminal messaging to me. I don't have an iPhone and my phone doesn't do it."
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Apple has since said they are 'rolling out a fix' after becoming aware of the ongoing issue.
“We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers dictation and we are rolling out a fix,” an Apple spokesperson said.
The company believe the glitch is caused by a 'phonetic overlap' meaning the word 'Trump' was suggested when users dictated words, which contained an 'r' consonant.
Apple told Fox News that other words were also being affected.
However, some people believe it might not be a glitch after all, with John Burkey, who used to work on the Siri team at Apple, telling the New York Times that it 'smells like a serious prank'.
Meanwhile, the internet has had a lot of opinions on the matter, too, with plenty of people trying it out for themselves on their own iPhones.
One TikTok user wrote: "It did it for me! Thats not okay! Apple boo!"
While another said: "This is insane it also worked for me and I gasped so loud."
And a third added: "Wait I really thought this was fake somehow why did it actually do it."
Others said other words were affected, too, with another commenting: "Mine did it the first time, and then several times after that it wrote 'Reinald'???"
Tyla has reached out to Apple and The White House for comment.
It comes just one day after Apple announced it would be investing more than $500 billion (£396 billion) in the US over the next four years.
Apple boss Tim Cook met with Donald Trump earlier this month, with the tech giant explaining it's the 'largest ever spend commitment' from the company.
The investment is also set to include include a factory in Texas for artificial intelligence servers, meanwhile it should add around 20,000 new jobs in research and development.