Apple has come under scrutiny after a viral TikTok video revealed that its iPhone voice-to-text feature briefly displays the word "Trump" when users dictate "racist" before correcting itself.
Fox News Digital replicated the issue multiple times, observing the word “Trump” flash on the screen before being replaced by “racist.” However, the glitch did not occur consistently, and in some instances, the dictation feature displayed unrelated words like “reinhold” or “you” instead.
In response to the controversy, an Apple spokesperson acknowledged the issue, stating:
"We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers Dictation, and we are rolling out a fix as soon as possible."
According to Apple, the speech recognition models that power dictation may temporarily display words with phonetic overlap before settling on the correct word. The company clarified that the bug affects other words starting with ‘r’ as well, not just "racist."
Tech glitches and political controversy
This is not the first time big tech firms have faced accusations of political bias in their AI-driven features.
In September 2024, Amazon’s virtual assistant, Alexa, was at the center of a similar controversy after a viral video showed it providing reasons to vote for Kamala Harris, but refusing to offer the same for Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Amazon later confirmed that the issue arose due to pre-programmed manual overrides and was fixed within hours.
At the time, Amazon apologised and assured that it had audited its system to ensure neutrality in future election-related prompts.
While Apple insists that its voice-to-text glitch is purely a technical error and not an instance of political bias, the controversy has once again highlighted concerns over the role of artificial intelligence in shaping public discourse.
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