Still there as I post this. A very creative way to protest.
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Apple Fixing 'Trump' Dictation Processing Bug
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We might never know the true reason for this, but we can be sure it isn’t because the words sound similar.
Do people also think Apple intentionally made “racist” change to “Rhett” and “Rouch” like the Macrumors article says? And if you think that’s a genuine mistake, do you think those words sound similar?
A simple "hack" for those interested...
On your mac
Open Settings->Keyboard>Text Replacements
Then you can replace Trump with whatever text or Emoji your prefer!
On your mac
Open Settings->Keyboard>Text Replacements
Then you can replace Trump with whatever text or Emoji your prefer!
so how exactly does trump and racist sound similar?
Nope, LOL. I spent 6+ years in grad school studying linguistics, the latter years mostly focusing on phonological theory, and I really don't see much to go on here. I am not versed in natural language processing, so perhaps some explanation from that field can account for this in ways that are not apparent to me. They certainly both have some kind of /r/ sound and both at or near the beginnning, but the vowels, number of syllables, and nearly everything else about the words is different (I suppose there is also a variant of /t/ in each, but the phonetic realization is quite different, to say nothing of the fact that their positions should not make this confusing).
So, I'd be curious what Apple means. I'm guessing they use real-world data to feed these models, not just speech processing theory, so it's possible something there was "contaminated" in a way that made it behave this way -- perhaps not created directly by Apple -- but that's not quite the same explanation.
It seems easier to agree with the former Siri engineer who thinks it was a prank.
(But again: confessing that this is not my subfield, although I can't imagine they would entirely discard phonetic knowledge or specific phonological patterns of the language they are processing...)
There was so much back then. You'd almost think that the people in Redmond were racists.
I remember hearing "FUD" for the first time when Microsoft was trying to head off Digital Research's DR-DOS.
There are more good people in the industry who are wonderful people. It's a shame that the few put a negative light on everyone in the industry.
I thought it was a conspiracy theory until I saw it with my own eyes. Very unprofessional.
Coolest feature ever, we need a keynote to demonstrate it.
Multiple iPhone owners today noticed a pronunciation processing issue that causes the word "Trump" to momentarily show up when using dictation to send a message with the word "racist."
In some cases, when speaking the word racist through the iPhone's built-in dictation feature, the iPhone briefly interprets the spoken word as "Trump" and "Trump" text shows up in the Messages app before being corrected to the actual word (racist) as Apple's processing interprets what was said.
Speaking the word racist with dictation doesn't always show "Trump" first, though it did show up more often than other words in our testing. We also saw "Rhett" and "Rouch" appear before the iPhone corrects to racist.
A video depicting the bug has been circulating on TikTok and other social networks. An Apple spokesperson told The New York Times that the issue was due to a phonetic overlap between the two words, and "Trump" and "racist" do indeed have similar sounds. It is not clear if this dictation issue existed prior to today and was just now noticed, or if there was some internal change that caused it. Apple said that it is working on a fix.
Former Apple Siri team member John Burkey told The New York Times that there is "probably" code in Apple's systems that is causing the iPhone to write Trump when someone speaks the word racist. "This smells like a serious prank," he said, though he also claimed that it is not clear if it was added into Apple's code or seeded into data that Apple uses for its AI features.
Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
Article Link: Apple Fixing 'Trump' Dictation Processing Bug
That doesnt seem like something that needs fixing, it seems more like siri’s dictation got something right for once!
They’ve got tremendous problems over at Apple, really big problems. I tried ordering breakfast on my IPhone (which, I don’t have to tell you, is made in CHYNA - I know it, you know it, everybody knows it) and the McDonald’s app wouldn’t let me order a cheeseburger before 10AM, furthermore it only lets me add 20 cheeseburgers to my cart. I wanted 21, but that’s DEI for you.
Around 4 years and 3 months ago, back in 2020, it was observed by numerous people on social media, that ALL, i.e. 100%, without exception, all the bugs in software that were used to tally numbers between two groups, ALWAYS consistently, without fail, favored only ONE group.
And no one from that ONE group cared, since it meant they benefitted.
And many, from the other group - that were disadvantaged by that consistency in the software bugs - they called it a feature not a bug.
But the ONE group that consistently benefitted, they called it a bug.
It was widely reported that there was nothing to see here folks.
And no one from that ONE group cared, since it meant they benefitted.
And many, from the other group - that were disadvantaged by that consistency in the software bugs - they called it a feature not a bug.
But the ONE group that consistently benefitted, they called it a bug.
It was widely reported that there was nothing to see here folks.
I want to note that I updated the article and removed the line about the words having similar sounds to prevent confusion that it came from Apple PR. Apple PR said the first part about phonetic overlap, and I wanted to add that there is similarity between the R sounds in each word, so that sentence was not from Apple PR. It was from me, but it wasn't written clearly, and it seems a lot of people don't agree that the R sounds are similar anyway.
It’s probably building from an associative database that learns from input from those who opted in to apple’s analytics. It probably also contains associations based on news and other data. It may be an LLM or other model, but that’s the likely genesis
And it’s not exactly surprising that that would end up associating Trump and racist, even outside of politics he’s already been associating that word to himself for decades
I’m from NYC and remember the many problems he had with the various housing regulations because he kept screwing over black folks, this was loooong before he was involved in politics
Or, for that matter, his taking out full page ads calling for the death penalty for the central park 5 (who were eventually exonerated btw)
Yeah, that'll show him!!!
Shame to watch MacRumors turn into Reddit, BlueCry or some other technical platform Land of Misfit Toys for all the people who voted the other way in November.
But it is good some voices are coalescing in only a few places in refuge.
Means the normal people in the mainstream don't have to listen to it.
In a world full of losers with Trump Derangement Syndrome….anything is possible!
Yep, likely some woke s.o.b. in a cubicle somewhere at Apple.
I remember a similar “bug” would correct the word “whore” to autosuggest correct to “Kim Kardashian”. You really have to wonder who is playing these little games.
Yet another example of how saying the same thing repeatedly doesn’t make it true
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