Users of the iPhone noticed in recent days that the Apple devices transcribe the word “Trump” when they say the word “racist” in a voice-to-text feature.
Several viral videos posted on social media this week showed iPhone users saying the word “racist” while using the speech recognition feature, after which the word “Trump” flashes before settling on the word “racist.”
????REPORT???? – Apple Says It’s Fixing an iPhone Dictation Bug That Hears ‘Trump’ When Someone Says ‘Racist’
The issue is related to “phonetic overlap between certain words”, according to Apple.
“The speech-recognition feature may temporarily display words with some phonetic… pic.twitter.com/8960D7SH7a
— Sarah Fields (@SarahisCensored) February 25, 2025
“Hey @Apple @timcook Why does my iPhone glitch the word Trump when I voice to text the word racist?” one user asked while tagging the company and Apple’s CEO. “Don’t believe me, try it!”
“Wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself on my iPhone,” another user said. “Who at Apple is juvenile enough to change the word Racist to Trump momentarily when using voice to text?”
“I just said racist into my iPhone and Trump’s name popped up disappeared and then racist [stayed] on there,” a third commented.
“This is from Apple. This is far beyond comprehension,” he added, including a few curse words to make his reaction clear.
Apple acknowledged the purported glitch Tuesday.
The technology giant said in a statement provided to CNN that “we are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers Dictation and we are rolling out a fix today.”
Apple added that the voice-to-text feature sometimes shows an incorrect word with similar phonetic features as the system tries to discern which word the user actually meant.
But it’s doubtful that anyone is buying that excuse.
Unless you’re a Silicon Valley progressive, there is no connection between the words “Trump” and “racist,” phonetic or otherwise.
We have seen this pattern countless times with Big Tech.
Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez wrote a book about the Black Lives Matter movement a few years ago, but Amazon blocked ads for the volume.
After pressure, Amazon said it would reverse the decision, blaming “part of a human error that was being rectified” for the censorship.
Facebook similarly blamed a “technical glitch” for preventing conservatives from running advertisements on the platform back in 2016.
It’s interesting that these “glitches” seem only to impact conservatives, Republicans, Trump supporters, or anyone else to the right of a San Francisco technology elite.
Though there are some signs that the political winds are shifting enough to make some of this bias impossible, rest assured that such bias is still deeply embedded in Silicon Valley.
In other words, keep a keen eye out for more “glitches.”
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