Meta Issues an Apology After Mistakingly Declaring the Death of an Indian Chief Minister

Meta has apologized because an auto-translate mistakenly said that Indian Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had died. 

Meta has apologized because of a mistake in one of its sites that led people to believe that Indian Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had died.

The mistake happened on Tuesday, when the leader of Karnataka state shared a message of sadness about the death of veteran actress B Saroja Devi in Kannada on Facebook and Instagram. But the auto-translation feature of the platforms got the word wrong and said that Siddaramaiah had “passed away” in English.

The Press Trust of India (PTI) says that the original post was meant to honor the late star but was translated incorrectly to make it sound like the chief minister had died.

A representative for Meta told PTI on Thursday that the mistake had been fixed. “We fixed a problem that caused this wrong Kannada translation for a short time,” the staffer said. “We are sorry this happened.”

After what happened, Siddaramaiah spoke out against Meta’s auto-translate feature, especially for Kannada, saying it “distorted facts” and “led users astray.” He stressed how dangerous these kinds of mistakes were when they were used in official contact.

In reaction, KV Prabhakar, Siddaramaiah’s media advisor, wrote to Meta on Thursday asking that the Kannada auto-translation feature be turned off for a while until it could be proven to work properly. He also told the company that they should work with Kannada language experts to keep mistakes from happening.

When the BBC looked at the translated version of the chief minister’s post on Friday, it said, “The senior actress B Sarojadevi, who died yesterday, paid his last respects.”

Meta hasn’t said if it plans to stop translating into Kannada while it works to make them more accurate.