In a recent incident that raised concerns over automated language services, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and X, issued an apology after its auto-translation tool mistakenly suggested the death of Karnataka’s Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. The error occurred when Siddaramaiah posted a tribute to late Indian actress B. Saroja Devi on Instagram, originally in Kannada, the official language of Karnataka. The auto-translation erroneously stated: “Chief Minister Siddaramaiah passed away yesterday multilingual star, senior actress B. Took darshan of Sarojadevi’s earthly body and paid his last respects.”
Meta acknowledged the glitch and said it has since been fixed. A spokesperson told the Press Trust of India, “We fixed an issue that briefly caused this inaccurate Kannada translation. We apologize that this happened.”
Siddaramaiah’s office expressed serious concern over the tool’s reliability, calling the inaccuracies “frequently inaccurate and, in some cases, grossly misleading.” In a firm plea posted on Facebook and X, the Chief Minister labeled such negligence from technology platforms as “dangerous” and warned it “can harm public understanding & trust.” His office formally requested Meta to suspend the auto-translation feature for Kannada content until it could be adequately improved by consulting language experts.
Kannada is spoken by an estimated 45 million native speakers and another 15 million second-language users, making accurate translations critical for public communications. Despite the fix, some inaccuracies persist as of Friday, with the auto-translation still misrepresenting the tribute post.
Okay.ng reports that this incident follows prior controversies involving Meta’s platform safety, adding pressure on the company to improve its language handling tools, especially as they serve millions of users globally.
