Google Home smart speakers temporarily stopped censoring the N-word when reading song titles aloud, exposing users to uncensored racial slurs.
For an undetermined period, Google Home smart speakers appeared to have spoken aloud the N-word without censoring it. TikTok user @ohgustie uploaded a video showing a Google Home Mini speaker repeating the title of the Jay-Z and Kanye West song 'N***as In Paris' without censoring the racial slur, while still bleeping out profanity in other songs like 'Ain't Shit' by Doja Cat. The user, who goes by Shay, told Gizmodo that their Google speaker had previously censored the word. It's unclear when Google's speakers stopped censoring the N-word, but the speaker was once again bleeping out the word after the video was uploaded. Google did not respond to requests for comment about how this happened. The incident was compared to Microsoft's 2016 chatbot Tay incident, though the circumstances were very different.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI that exposes users to harmful, abusive, unsafe or inappropriate content. May involve providing advice or encouraging action. Examples of toxic content include hate speech, violence, extremism, illegal acts, or child sexual abuse material, as well as content that violates community norms such as profanity, inflammatory political speech, or pornography.
AI system
Due to a decision or action made by an AI system
Unintentional
Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed