Apple shared on Tuesday that it was fixing an issue with its voice-to-text system that briefly replaced the word “racist” with the word “Trump.”
“We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers Dictation, and we are rolling out a fix today,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement, the New York Times reported.
The issue first started to appear earlier this week when some iPhone users said that after they spoke the word “racist” using their phone’s dictation feature, it would automatically type “Trump” before quickly correcting to the word “racist.”
The company acknowledged the issue, saying its system incorrectly suggests the word “Trump” when users spoke words with “r” consonants. Apple said that a fix is being rolled out to resolve the issue.
Apple added that the speech recognition models behind its dictation feature will occasionally show an incorrect word with phonetic overlap. It will then correct itself to show the user’s word instead.
The company offered no further comment on why the system may have heard the name of President Donald Trump when a user speaks the word “racist.”
Videos of the phones making the error quickly circulated online as many pointed to the issue and called out Apple, alleging the issue was intentional.
“Whoever at Apple is responsible for this should lose their job. The voice-to-text feature is displaying ‘Trump’ whenever I say ‘racist,’” one user wrote.
The issue also popped up the same week that Apple announced that it would take another step in the artificial intelligence race, with its plan to build a quarter-million-square-foot factory in Houston, Texas, by 2026 to build and house its AI servers.
The new facility will be part of the company’s overall goal to invest $500 billion in U.S. facilities, projects, and infrastructure over the next four years. The company is also expected to hire another 20,000 research and development jobs across the U.S.
Trump praised the move from Apple in a post to Truth Social on Monday, saying in all-caps that Apple was showing “faith in what we are doing, without which, they wouldn’t be investing ten cents. Thank you (CEO) Tim Cook and Apple.”
Trump has yet to comment on the apparent software “glitch” from Apple.