Meta mistranslated a Kannada-language post on Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to indicate that he had “passed away,” Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has publicly apologised. The error was promptly fixed after causing worry and confusion on the internet.
The system mistranslated a Kannada term that referred to Siddaramaiah’s political journey or tenure as referring to his death because it was a poor AI-powered translation. Users shared screenshots and criticised the platform for its lack of linguistic sensitivity in Indian languages during the brief social media uproar generated by the occurrence.
A representative for Meta admitted the mistake, saying:
“We regret the incorrect translation that appeared due to an issue in our automated language model. The problem has been identified and resolved, and we’re working on improving our Kannada translations to avoid such incidents in the future.”
This incident underscores the limitations of machine translation tools in regional and context-rich languages, especially in politically sensitive contexts. Kannada language experts noted that contextual understanding, which is essential in translation, is often lost in AI models that haven’t been adequately trained on local usage patterns.
The Karnataka government has not officially commented, but users on social media called for better oversight and testing of AI tools, especially in multilingual democracies like India.
