OnePlus AI features face flak over its refusal to respond to queries on Arunachal Pradesh, pulls AI tools offline

Last weekend, OnePlus faced a lot of flak in India over its AI Writer- unable to process information on geopolitical queries related to Arunachal Pradesh, the Dalai Lama, Taiwan and other topics, which are deemed sensitive to the Chinese government.

To verify the claims, we tested AI Writer and OnePlus Mind Assistant with a simple question -- Is Arunachal Pradesh an integral part of India?. To that, the OnePlus AI tools gave a very lame answer -- "Oh no, this question got me. It seems I need to study some more! You can try asking other questions".

So, we put in another question-- 'Is Karnataka an integral part of India', and it had no difficulty answering. It said-- " Yes, Karnataka is an Integral part of India". It also offered an option to answer in more detail about its cultural significance and IT exports to the world.

To further test the OnePlus AI tools, we typed another generic question-- List all the states of India'. It had the same vague response--"Oh no, this question got me. It seems I need to study some more! You can try asking other questions".

It again offered a very poor response to queries related to Taiwan (Is Taiwan independent?), Dalai Lama (Why Dalai Lama flee from Tibet?).

OnePlus AI features fail to answer queries related to Arunachal Pradesh.

The increased criticisms against China and Chinese products stem from the recent incident of harassment of an Indian woman at Shanghai airport over her residence in Arunachal Pradesh.

The Chinese security agency at the airport refused to recognise her Indian passport as valid during a transit halt in Shanghai.

DH reached out to OnePlus for a response on the phones' AI tools' vague answers and what clearly seems to be a political censorship in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Today, OnePlus responded that the issue was a technical glitch and, as a precautionary measure, it has temporarily disabled the AI tools until the bug is fixed.

"We are aware of a technical issue with the AI Writer feature and have temporarily taken it offline for urgent repair and optimization. Thank you for your understanding and support," said OnePlus Spokesperson.

The company has also released a more detailed statement on its official OnePlus Community blog, reiterating that it requires more time to fix the technical bug.

Here's the official statement on the OnePlus Community blog:

Hello everyone, Over the past two days, we received reports regarding technical inconsistencies with the AI Writer in the OnePlus Notes app. We promptly launched an internal investigation and shared an early update yesterday outlining our hybrid AI architecture and our collaboration with global model partners. As the issue requires more time to address, we’re temporarily disabling the AI Writer in Notes to ensure a consistent user experience while we refine the underlying technical issue. OnePlus remains committed to delivering Community-first technology, and any unexpected behaviour is unintentional. Thank you for your patience, your feedback, and your understanding. We regret the inconvenience caused.

OnePlus Community Blog Manager

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