Scottish Grandmother Receives Offensive Message due to Apple AI Transcription Error

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66-year-old Louise Littlejohn from Dunfermline received an offensive text message after Apple's voice-to-text AI mis-transcribed a car garage's voicemail invitation. The system mistakenly inserted inappropriate sexual references and insults, with experts suggesting the caller's accent may have contributed to the error.[AI generated]

Why's our monitor labelling this an incident or hazard?

An AI system (Apple's voice-to-text service) was involved and malfunctioned by inserting inappropriate content into a transcribed message. This malfunction directly caused harm to the recipient (emotional distress from receiving an insulting and inappropriate message) and indirectly to the garage (reputational harm). The harm is realized and directly linked to the AI system's malfunction, fitting the definition of an AI Incident.[AI generated]
AI principles
AccountabilityFairnessHuman wellbeingRobustness & digital securitySafetyTransparency & explainability
Industries
Consumer productsConsumer servicesIT infrastructure and hosting
Affected stakeholders
Consumers
Harm types
PsychologicalReputational
Severity
AI incident
Business function:
Citizen/customer service
AI system task:
Recognition/object detection
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