Apple promises to fix dictation bug that replaces ‘racist’ with ‘Trump’

Apple has promised to fix quickly a bug in its voice-to-text function that briefly swapped words with an “r” consonant — including “racist” — for “Trump”.

The phenomenon, which went viral in a video on TikTok and was quickly seized upon by rightwing commentators, comes as the $3.7tn company seeks to shore up its relationship with Donald Trump’s administration.

“We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers dictation and we are rolling out a fix today,” Apple said on Tuesday.