Tech giant Meta has apologized and said it has fixed an auto-translation issue that led one of its social media platforms to mistakenly announce the death of Siddaramaiah, chief minister of the Indian state of Karnataka.
Siddaramaiah had posted on Instagram in the local Kannada language, saying he was paying his respects to the late Indian actress B. Saroja Devi. He also paid tribute to the actress on Facebook and X. However, Meta’s auto-translation tool inaccurately translated the Instagram post to suggest that Siddaramaiah, who uses just one name, was the one who “passed away.”
“Chief Minister Siddaramaiah passed away yesterday multilingual star, senior actress B. Took darshan of Sarojadevi’s earthly body and paid his last respects,” the garbled translation read.
In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said: “We fixed an issue that briefly caused this inaccurate Kannada translation. We apologize that this happened.”
Siddaramaiah criticized the auto-translation tool as “dangerous” in posts on Facebook and X, adding that such “negligence” from tech giants “can harm public understanding and trust.” He urged Meta to “temporarily suspend” its auto-translation tool for content written in Kannada “until the translation accuracy is reliably improved.” His office also requested that Meta work with Kannada-language experts to improve the feature.
“This poses a significant risk, especially when public communications, official statements, or important messages from the Chief Minister and the Government are incorrectly translated,” Siddaramaiah wrote. “It can lead to misinterpretation among users, many of whom may not realize that what they are reading is an automated and faulty translation rather than the original message.”
CNN (7/18/25) By Amarachi Orie