Report from the New York Times
In Brief – Apple has acknowledged a bug with the iPhone’s dictation feature that sometimes surfaces when a user says the word “racist”, with the phone briefly displaying “Trump” before landing on the correct word. The company claimed that the cause was a technical glitch that likely involved a phonetic overlap between the words “Trump” and “racist” that may be related to the “r” consonant. Tests with the iPhone’s Dictation indicate that other words that can produce “trump” include “ramp,” “rhubarb,” “rhythmic” and “ruffles.” However, John Burkey, an AI expert and former member of Apple’s Siri team, said that word correcting itself was likely an indication that the issue was not a technical glitch but that there was probably software code in Apple’s system that caused the word change. “This smells like a serious prank,” Mr. Burkey said. An Apple spokesperson responded to media inquiries saying, “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.”
Context – Founders and top executives from digital giants publicly embracing President Trump, backing his inauguration, and walking back progressive corporate policies, was a big change for tech companies with leaders and workforces that have long leaned leftward. This includes Apple, where CEO Tim Cook donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inauguration, sat on the dais during his swearing-in, and recently met with President Trump and said the company would invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the United States over the next four years. As tech company leaders appeared to shift rightward and towards Trump, reports surfaced of “quiet rebellions” among some left-leaning employees, although less heady tech job market conditions appear to be tamping down protests. This “prank” at Apple might be one example. Also, in recent years, “whistleblowers” were an increasingly common tech company occurrence, impacting Facebook, Amazon, TikTok, Uber, Instagram and Microsoft. Might pushback eventually take that form as well?