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7h ago

Meta Apologizes for Kannada Translation Error, Karnataka Demands Suspension and Expert Collaboration

After a condolence message mourning a veteran actress was mistranslated into a false report of the chief minister’s death, Meta issued an apology accompanied by a fix to its AI translation system.

: Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah.
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Overview

  • Meta’s AI translation tool misrendered a Kannada condolence post for actress B. Saroja Devi to wrongly state that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had died, triggering state outrage.
  • Meta spokespersons said they corrected the faulty machine translation and are gathering user feedback to improve accuracy across regional languages.
  • On July 16, the chief minister’s media advisor K. V. Prabhakar formally urged Meta to temporarily suspend the Kannada auto-translation feature until its reliability is proven.
  • The Karnataka government is awaiting Meta’s formal commitment to pause the service and collaborate with qualified Kannada language experts to safeguard official communications.
  • The incident spotlights broader concerns over AI fallibility in regional translation and the need for enhanced oversight to maintain public trust in multilingual government messaging.