Bengaluru: Social media giant Meta has apologised after its automatic translation tool erroneously declared Chief Minister Siddaramaiah dead while translating a condolence message posted by the Karnataka CMO in Kannada on Facebook.
On Tuesday, CM Siddaramaiah posted a condolence message in Kannada on Facebook and Instagram, condoling the death of Indian actress B. Saroja Devi.
The Meta English translation of the message stated, “Chief Minister Siddaramaiah passed away yesterday multilingual star, senior actress B. Took darshan of Saroja Devi’s earthly body and paid his last respects.”
Meta’s AI-powered translation tools are used across Facebook and Instagram for translating public bios and content.
The company acknowledged that its machine translation model had produced errors in Kannada translations on Facebook but claimed the issue has now been rectified, the CM’s office said.
The company’s response came after CM Siddaramaiah, taking to social media on Thursday, posted, “Faulty auto-translation of Kannada content on Meta platforms is distorting facts and misleading users. This is especially dangerous when it comes to official communications.”
“In many cases, Facebook shows auto-translated versions of posts by default in user feeds. The original Kannada post remains unchanged and can be viewed by selecting, ‘See original’ option,” he said in a post on X.
Facebook’s translation feature shows up on user feeds based on their settings, and content creators have no way to disable or control the auto-translation feature on viewers’ feeds, Siddaramaiah said.
CM Siddaramaiah further stated, “My Media Advisor K V Prabhakar has formally written to Meta urging immediate correction. Social media platforms must act responsibly. I caution citizens to be aware that translations shown are often inaccurate. Such negligence by tech giants can harm public understanding and trust.”
The latest post by the Chief Minister’s Office, referring to a report, stated, “Social media giant Meta issued an apology for the inaccurate translation of Kannada content on its platforms and stated that the technical issue had been resolved.”
