In a recent development, Apple has announced it’s addressing an iPhone bug that caused its dictation feature to briefly display “Trump” when users speak the word “racist,” before correcting itself to the intended word.
The issue gained widespread attention after a viral TikTok video demonstrated the glitch, sparking controversy and accusations of political bias from conservatives against the tech giant. The problem appears to affect words containing the “r” consonant during the speech-to-text conversion process.
Holy shit it’s real! Apple iPhones replace the word “racist” with “Trump” when using the dictation feature. Apple claims it’s working to fix this “bug.” pic.twitter.com/J60YUohhJM
— Tiffany Fong (@TiffanyFong_) February 25, 2025
An Apple spokesperson stated Tuesday evening: “We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers Dictation and we are rolling out a fix today.”
Asmongold roasted Apple for transcribing dictation bug that transcribed ‘racist’ as ‘Trump’
Popular Twitch streamer Asmongold has called out Apple for a controversial iPhone dictation bug where saying the word “racist” through voice-to-text would occasionally transcribe as “Trump” instead.
Initially skeptical about the issue, Asmongold discussed the bug during his stream after Apple officially acknowledged the problem. “This is so crazy I don’t even believe it,” he said while examining reports of the glitch. After viewers confirmed the bug was real, Asmongold’s disbelief grew when learning Apple had officially addressed the situation.
An Apple spokesperson confirmed Tuesday that the company is working to resolve the issue. While the bug reportedly affects other words beginning with ‘R’, Asmongold pointed out a peculiar aspect of the glitch: “If the bug is with R then you could also say rainbow and Trump would show up naturally right? So why is it that the only R word that shows up with Trump is racist?”
The streamer theorized this wasn’t an intentional corporate decision but likely the work of a rogue developer. “I don’t even think this is something that Apple did on their own because I think that Apple would not do this,” he explained. “I think that there probably was some developer or some person who thought that it would be funny to do this.”
Asmongold dismissed the notion that this was a top-down directive, joking that “Tim Apple” wouldn’t have ordered developers to make such a connection, concluding that this was likely the work of a mischievous employee who managed to slip the code into the system.
The company explained that the temporary display of incorrect words occurs during the initial analysis phase when speech recognition models process phonetically similar words. The system subsequently refines its analysis to identify and display the correct intended word.
This technical hiccup highlights ongoing challenges in artificial intelligence accuracy as the technology continues to evolve. The incident comes at a time when major tech companies, including Apple, are increasingly positioning AI capabilities as key selling points in their smartphone offerings.
The swift response from Apple to address this transcription error reflects the growing importance of maintaining accuracy in AI-powered features, particularly as these technologies become more integrated into daily communication tools.
