Apple has acknowledged a peculiar bug with the iPhone’s dictation function, which briefly displays the word “Trump” when someone says the word “racist.” The problem gained attention on Tuesday after a video showing the strange substitution went viral on TikTok and other social media.
The company issued a statement to The New York Times and Fox News confirming the bug. “We’re aware of the issue with the speech recognition model that powers dictation, and we’re implementing a fix as soon as possible,” an unnamed company spokesperson said, according to Fox News.
Apparently, the problem boils down to a phonetic match between “Trump” and “racist.” The company told Fox News that other words with the consonant “r” are also sometimes affected. But John Berkey, who used to work on Apple’s Siri development team, told the Times that the appearance of Trump’s name “smells like a serious prank” that could have been deliberately carried out by someone at the company.
Regardless of the technical cause, the embarrassing glitch comes a day after Apple announced plans to invest more than $500 billion in the United States over the next four years. The company is seeking to mitigate the potential impact of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump: 10 percent duties are already in effect on goods imported from China, and a 25 percent duty is threatened for chips.
