I messed up spelling "juggler" in a spelling bee once (I was 10).

The confusing thing about LLMs is that they speak tokens, not written text, so it's a lot more like interrogating someone who is functionally illiterate- of course they're going to be a terrible speller.

You can find much weirder things that LLMs are absurdly bad at, like "A farmer needs to get himself and a chicken across a river. His boat can hold the farmer and one piece of cargo. How does he do this?" 9 times out of 10 LLMs will pattern match this to the classic puzzle (there's usually also a sack of grain and a wolf) and start insisting on extra trips and inventing wolves. Even if a human makes the same mistake, they almost certainly would realize it after being reminded that there is no wolf, but LLMs often insist there is. o1-preview (but not -mini) seems to have cracked it, though.

Yep. Try it with your neighbours. It's not bad or offensive; it is just what it is.