iPhone's voice recognition feature has a bug where it recognizes 'Racist' as 'Trump' when you type it in

Some iPhone users have reported that when they type the word 'racist' using voice input, it is recognized as 'Trump.' Apple has acknowledged the bug and is working on a fix.

iPhone Dictation Feature Transcribes the Word 'Racist' as 'Trump' - The New York Times

I also tested voice-to-text on iPhone, speaking the word “racist.” For a brief moment, it switches the word to “Trump,” and then BACK to “racist.” pic.twitter.com/sbng2vFLRm

— Austin C. Mullen (@austincmullen) February 25, 2025

Use voice recognition on the iPhone text input screen. Say 'Racist.'

The iPhone then recognized what it heard as 'Trump.'

However, it was instantly converted to 'Racist.'

Mullen and his team tested the app on NBC's team members and found that it was sometimes able to recognize 'Trump,' though not every time. MacRumors reported that in some cases, it was able to recognize 'Rhett' and 'Rouch' instead.

Right-wing activist Alex Jones and others have expressed confusion and indignation about this, but Apple has explained that 'there was a problem with the voice recognition model and we are working on a fix.' According to what Apple explained to the New York Times, the cause was 'voice overlap.'

On the other hand, John Berkey, who previously worked on Siri, said that it was unlikely that the problem was caused by data collected for AI, and that it was more likely that someone had 'maliciously mischieved' the code to output 'Trump' when 'Racist' was input. Berkey commented that in that case, it was unclear whether the code was embedded in Apple's code or mixed in with the data.