Apple said Tuesday it will fix a bizarre iPhone dictation glitch that briefly shows the word “Trump” when a user says “racist.” The company acknowledged the bug and pledged to roll out a fix “as soon as possible.”
The glitch first gained attention after a video went viral on TikTok showing it in action. If you’re in need of a usb to usbc solution for seamless connectivity, check out this 10-port USB-C charger.
iPhone voice dictation makes big political blunder by flashing ‘Trump’ when users say ‘racist’
A bug within the iPhone’s voice engine is likely the root cause of the problem. As a result, the word “Trump” temporarily appears as “racist.” I can’t replicate the bug on my iPhone, but comments on this viral TikTok video suggest many users can reproduce it.
My iPhone writing “racist” to “Trump” for a brief second using voice to text. pic.twitter.com/qrIBkifSto
— AJ (@HarperBetter_) February 24, 2025
In a Tuesday statement to Fox News, an Apple spokesperson said, “We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers Dictation, and we are rolling out a fix as soon as possible.” Apparently, the problem occurs due to a phonetic overlap between “Trump” and “racist.” It seemingly also affects words with an “r” consonant when using iPhone dictation.
John Burkey, who previously worked on the Siri team at Apple, told The New York Times that the issue likely started after an update to Apple’s servers. He said he thinks it’s probably not an actual glitch. Instead, code on Apple’s servers likely causes iPhones to temporarily display “Trump” when using voice dictation to say “racist.”
“This smells like a serious prank,” Burkey told The Times. “The only question is: Did someone slip this into the data or slip into the code?”
It remains unclear if Apple will roll out a server-side fix or push a new iOS 18 build to stop iPhone dictation from flashing the word “Trump” when a user says the word “racist.”
This weird and embarrassing iPhone voice dictation glitch comes amidst President Donald Trump’s mounting tariff threats to countries and companies. To please him, Apple recently pledged to invest $500 billion in the United States over the next four years. As part of this, the company will create 20,000 new jobs and build an advanced manufacturing facility in Houston. The new plant will build Private Cloud Compute servers to power Apple Intelligence.
