Apple’s text-to-speech tool seems to beleive the words “racist” and “Trump” are similar. Users across social media have recently shared videos from their iPhones, which show the word “racist” being transcribed as “Trump”. It didn’t happen in every instance — sometimes it’s transcribed properly, and at other times it’s shown as “Trump” initially and moments later it autocorrects. Nevertheless, as you’d expect, this has ignited heated reactions from some users.
Some perceive this issue as a subtle attack against the president. For example, popular X user Alex Jones described it as a “Vicious, subliminal attack on President Trump.”
Apple has sought to clarify, however, stating that there is a bug in its text-to-speech app that makes it difficult to distinguish words containing the letter ” R”. According to a representative from Apple, a fix will be rolled out to correct this issue today.
Many social media users don’t seem to be satisfied with this explanation. They claim that since Apple’s own applications are developed and tested internally, it is likely that one of its developers is purposefully responsible for this.
A few days ago the president threatened to impose a tariff that would make iPhones manufactured outside the United States more expensive. This threat may likely have been part of Apple’s decision to commit to investing $500 billion in the United States for semiconductor development and manufacturing, between now and 2029. To some observers, this massive commitment appears to confirm that Apple is ready to work with the Trump administration, however.
While the president has responded to allegations of racism many times, it remains to be seen if he will respond to this latest incident. We’ll probably find out soon enough.