An elderly Scottish woman received a shocking text message courtesy of Apple’s AI-powered voice-to-text service, which produced a highly inappropriate and vulgar transcription of a voicemail. Louise Littlejohn, 66, from Dunfermline, was understandably stunned by the message.
Ms. Littlejohn had received a voicemail from a Lookers Land Rover garage in Motherwell, inviting her to an event. However, Apple’s AI significantly butchered the translation, injecting offensive language and sexual references into the text. The resulting iPhone text read, “Just be told to see if you have received an invite on your car if you’ve been able to have sex. Keep trouble with yourself that’d be interesting you piece of s**t give me a call,” according to a BBC report.
Initially, Ms. Littlejohn thought the text was a scam, but after recognizing the call’s zip code, she realized it was related to a car she had purchased from the garage. “Initially I was shocked – astonished – but then I thought that is so funny. The text was obviously quite inappropriate,” she told the BBC. “The garage is trying to sell cars, and instead of that they are leaving insulting messages without even being aware of it. It is not their fault at all.”
Experts suggest that Apple’s AI may have encountered difficulties due to the worker’s Scottish accent or background noise at the garage. This incident is the latest in a string of technological issues that have plagued the tech giant in recent months.
Apple previously announced it was working to fix its speech-to-text tool after reports surfaced on social media that the word “racist” was being transcribed as Donald Trump’s name. Furthermore, in January, the company had to suspend its AI summaries of news headlines after they were found to display false notifications. This isn’t the first time AI has produced inappropriate content, with Google’s Gemini chatbot notably displaying a threat in November 2023.
