NHK's AI-powered multilingual subtitle service using Google Translate API incorrectly displayed the disputed Senkaku Islands as 'Diaoyu Islands' (the Chinese name) in Chinese subtitles, leading to the termination of the entire multilingual service.
On December 10th, NHK was providing live streaming of its 24-hour English international broadcast with real-time multilingual subtitles in 9 languages using Google's AI translation API. During a news segment about Japan-US summit talks and China's reaction, the AI translation system incorrectly translated references to the Senkaku Islands (Okinawa Prefecture) as 'Diaoyu Islands' in the Chinese subtitles - using China's preferred terminology for the disputed territory. An NHK employee discovered the error when Chinese subtitles displayed 'Diaoyu Islands in Okinawa Prefecture' and 'Japan controls the Diaoyu Islands.' NHK had been operating this multilingual subtitle service since April 2020, expanding from 6 languages to 9 languages including Chinese, Spanish, French, and Ukrainian. The service included disclaimers that translations were automatic and might not be complete. Upon discovering the error, NHK immediately terminated the entire multilingual subtitle service on December 10th, determining it was 'not appropriate for NHK.' The broadcaster found similar mistranslations had occurred on at least 4 previous days when reviewing the past week's content. NHK President Nobuo Inaba announced plans to develop their own AI translation system to avoid future issues.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that inadvertently generate or spread incorrect or deceptive information, which can lead to inaccurate beliefs in users and undermine their autonomy. Humans that make decisions based on false beliefs can experience physical, emotional or material harms
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Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed