Apple is fixing a voice dictation bug that substitutes ‘Trump’ for ‘racist’

Apple has acknowledged a peculiar bug with the iPhone’s dictation feature that briefly displays “Trump” when someone says the word “racist.” The Verge has been unable to reproduce the issue, but it picked up attention on Tuesday after a video demonstrating the strange substitution went viral on TikTok and other social media.

The company provided a statement to The New York Times and Fox News confirming the bug. “We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers dictation, and we are rolling out a fix as soon as possible,” an unnamed spokesperson said, according to Fox News.

Apparently the issue boils down to phonetic overlap between “Trump” and “racist.” The company told Fox News that other words with an “r” consonant are also occasionally affected. But John Burkey, who formerly worked on the Siri team at Apple, told the Times that Trump’s name appearing “smells like a serious prank” that could have been purposefully carried out by someone internally.