Taking AI a bit too far? Apple's voice-to-text translation inserts sexual reference in major gaffe

The BBC who spoke to an expert also said that the gaffe could have partly been due to heavy Scottish accent or the background noise during the audio message.

An elderly Scottish woman was in for a rude shock after a message delivered to her from a garage was translated from voice to text by Artificial Intelligence. Why? An explicit sexual reference in the message.

The woman, hailing from Dunfermline in Fife of Scotland said the AI tool used by Apple ended up mistakenly adding an obscene insult and a sexual reference into an otherwise harmless message left by a garage.

The woman, 66-year-old Louise Littlejohn, received a voicemail message on Wednesday from a local garage in Motherwell in Scotland inviting her to an event.

An AI-powered service offered by Apple turned it into a text message which to her shock, asked if she had been able to "have sex" and also called her a "piece of ****".

BBC quoted Louise as saying that while she was shocked initially, she also thought it funny later as it was while inappropriate, was not the fault of the garage.

"The garage is trying to sell cars, and instead of that they are leaving insulting messages without even being aware of it. It is not their fault at all."

The BBC who spoke to an expert also said that the gaffe could have partly also been due to heavy Scottish accent or the background noise during the audio message.

The report also suggested that the reference to 'sex' could have been due to the usage of the word 'sixth' in the audio message.