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Louise Littlejohn, a 66-year-old woman from Dunfermline, Scotland, found herself shocked after receiving a voicemail message that was wildly inappropriate. AI threw in an unsolicited query about her sex life.
Some suggested the misinterpretation could have been caused by the caller’s Scottish accent. (Representative image)
It wasn’t just a slip of the tongue. It was an all-out verbal ambush. Louise Littlejohn, a 66-year-old woman from Dunfermline, Scotland, found herself shocked after receiving a voicemail message that was, to put it mildly, wildly inappropriate. And the culprit? Apple’s AI-powered dictation software. “It was obviously quite inappropriate,” Littlejohn shared, still baffled by the bizarre blunder. The ordeal reportedly began when she received a message from Lookers Land Rover garage in Motherwell. A seemingly routine call, they were simply inviting her to an upcoming event.
But somewhere between the spoken words and the AI’s attempt to transcribe them into text, things took a rather scandalous detour. When she glanced at the text version of the voicemail, she was horrified. According to BBC, the AI had decided to spice things up a little – referring to her as a “piece of s**t” and, just for good measure, throwing in an unsolicited query about her sex life.
Understandably, Littlejohn’s first thought was that this had to be some scam. It was only when she recognised the caller’s area code that the pieces started to fall into place. The garage had previously sold her a car and this was just a follow-up. “The garage is trying to sell cars and instead of that they are leaving insulting messages without even being aware of it,” she said, quick to clarify that they were in no way at fault. The real villain? The AI’s deeply flawed transcription.
Some have suggested that the misinterpretation could have been caused by the caller’s Scottish accent, though experts believe other factors were at play. Background noise, the caller reading from a script – these elements can wreak havoc on voice recognition systems, as explained by Peter Bell, a professor of speech technology at the University of Edinburgh. “All of those factors contribute to the system doing badly,” Bell stated, as reported by the Daily Mail.
BBC tech analysts have put forward another theory: the AI might have misheard “sixth” (as in the sixth of March, when the event was scheduled) as something far more risque. A classic case of machine error with an unintended comedic twist. But despite the initial shock, Littlejohn has managed to see the lighter side of the situation. “Initially I was shocked, astonished but then I thought that was so funny,” she admitted.
While this particular mishap resulted in nothing more than an awkward chuckle, experts warn that the incident highlights a more serious issue. AI-powered transcription software, still far from perfect, is capable of producing highly inappropriate content. “The bigger question is why it outputs that kind of content. If you are producing a speech-to-text system that is being used by the public, you would think you would have safeguards for that kind of thing,” Bell pointed out.
According to Apple, such errors occur due to phonetic overlaps, sometimes the software briefly displays an incorrect word before self-correcting. It seems AI still has a long way to go before it can fully master human speech. Until then, it might be a good idea to double-check those transcriptions, especially before sending a message to your grandma.
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