Overview

• Apple’s Plans app began showing Lake Léman as Lac de Genève on August 6 after widely endorsed user submissions exploited a loophole in its error-reporting system.
• Residents and officials from Lausanne, Montreux, Thonon-les-Bains and Évian-les-Bains have urged Apple to restore the historic Léman designation, citing cultural sensitivity along the Franco-Swiss border.
• The renaming was not an official update by Apple but a consequence of users leveraging a known flaw in the map-editing feature that automatically approves suggestions with sufficient endorsements.
• A similar prank in June saw Paris’s Boulevard Haussmann briefly renamed Boulevard Ousmane before Apple intervened, underscoring recurring gaps in moderation of crowdsourced edits.
• Observers warn that Apple’s recent push into AI-driven features may complicate oversight of automated map updates and it remains unclear when the lake’s label will be corrected.