Apple to fix iPhone dictation bug that replaces word 'racist' with 'Trump'
newsweek.com
newsweek.com
I’m sure it was a bug and not some kind of self-censoring thing, but I had (and still have) no good explanation for it. Language is weird.
The most likely explanation to me is that Apple probably has a feature which automatically replaces expletives so that users don't accidentally send messages with offensive language that was not intended. It's probably a simple substitution which maps known expletives to suitable replacements. A disgruntled developer probably added this substitution and, for whatever reason, it didn't get caught until it hit production. I don't know if this is true, but it seems like a reasonable explanation to me.
I see no indication that this is an ubiquitous issue.
The video showed two attempts, with the issue only occurring on the second attempt. It isn't obvious how many attempts were made before the start of the video. The rest of the text conversation visible in the video did not appear to be political, but it's impossible to say what was discussed before that.
You can actually get something similar to happen yourself, too, if you transcribe enough text with Whisper. I've had Whisper reword sentences in ways that don't sound like source audio at all, but still work as what someone might actually say.
This is true in a room full of people who aren't linguists just like it's true that the government doesn't use SQL in a room full of Elon orbiters. I don't even like Apple.
/ˈtɹəmp/
/ˈɹeɪsɪst/
There is a plausible overlap right at the beginning. You just made incorrect assumptions. You seem to assume that English has a universal phonology, that speakers all pronounce things the same way every time (i.e. you failed to account for alternation[0] on an individual speaker level, let alone the variance between dialects), and the fact that small tongue movements have an outsized effect on the produced vowel sound.
[ᵗ°ɹ] and /ɹ/ sound the same under the right environmental conditions. If the /t/ is quiet enough, then the /ɹ/ can easily "outcompete" the /t/.
/ə/ and /e/ are close neighbors. With natural variance, they can sound similar under the right environmental conditions.
And finally, many people who say /ɹ/ also introduce a very short, almost unvoiced /ə/ before transitioning to /eɪ/, since, again, /ə/ and /e/ are close neighbors.
So yes, they do have phonetic overlap, maybe not for you, but for other people it's plausible... and probable. If you watch the original video, they're recording a very short clip which gives the STT engine very little context (and they had to do it twice to reproduce the behavior because one of the attempts did not replace "racist" with "Trump").
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternation_(linguistics)
We get gaffes like this from new AIs/LLMs/autocorrect/clever-branching-algorithms-of-the-day about every 1-2 years.
Also [dupe] and kinda lame for the mainstream media to be picking up.... and then lying since Variety said that 16 hours ago, unless Variety was wrong, but that's trivial for the BBC/Newsweek to check.
Gets all the nut job HN conspiracy people out of the woodwork and keeps both sides fighting, so I guess they get their clicks.
It is interesting technically, if only there was a forum for that.