Apple has faced another controversy with its artificial intelligence system, as some iPhone users reported seeing the word “racist” temporarily appear as “Trump” before correction. The issue was replicated by The New York Times and led to questions about Apple’s AI capabilities.
An Apple spokeswoman attributed the problem to phonetic overlap between the two words but acknowledged that a fix is being worked on. John Burkey, founder of Wonderrush.ai, an AI start-up, suggested that the issue may be due to software code rather than data collection errors.
Burkey believes the incident could be a prank and wonders if someone altered the code or data intentionally. This latest issue follows Apple’s previous AI-related controversies, including a 2018 episode where Siri displayed a nude image in response to a question about Donald Trump.
The recent incident coincides with a major investment by Apple, totaling $500 billion for US infrastructure over four years. The company has been meeting with President Trump and recently made headlines after donating $1 million to his inauguration.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/technology/iphone-dictation-trump-racist.html