Apple says that “phonetic overlap” is to blame for a peculiar glitch in the iPhone’s dictation feature.
Over the last several days, the “bug” has gained traction on various social networks including TiKTok. In one video on TikTok, you can see an iPhone user using the built-in dictation feature to clearly say the word “racist,” only for the iPhone to moementarily transcribe it as “Trump.” The transcription quickly corrects itself before being finalized.
An Apple spokeswoman told The New York Times that the issue is due to a “phonetic overlap” between the two words and that the company is working on a fix.
John Burkey, a former member of the Siri team at Apple who is “still in regular contact with the team,” says the issue began “after an update to Apple’s servers.” Burkey is skeptical of the “phonetic overlap” excuse and said it “smells like a serious prank” by someone inside Apple.
The issue appeared to begin after an update to Apple’s servers, said John Burkey, the founder of Wonderrush.ai, an artificial intelligence start-up, and a former member of Apple’s Siri team who is still in regular contact with the team.
But he said that it was unlikely that the data that Apple has collected for its artificial intelligence offerings was causing the problem, and the word correcting itself was likely an indication that the issue was not just technical. Instead, he said, there was probably software code somewhere on Apple’s systems that caused iPhones to write the word “Trump” when someone said “racist.”
“This smells like a serious prank,” Mr. Burkey said. “The only question is: Did someone slip this into the data or slip into the code?”
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal also notes that other words with an “r” consonant also temporarily replaced with “Trump,” including “rampant” and “rampage.”
Here’s one of the TikTok videos in question if you’d like to see for yourself:
9to5Mac’s Take
The New York Times story cleverly omits the fact that other words like “rampage” trigger this glitch, not just “racist.” This leads some credence to Apple’s explanation that this is due to “phonetic overlap.”
Still, I’m choosing to believe this was a prank – and an excellent prank at that – by someone inside Apple who is a little frustrated with the company cozying up to Trump.
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