355
"trying to fix the problem"
Oh dear God that is frankly horrifying.
U.S.S. Ford is going to get sunk, isn't it? "we're trying to fix it" you motherfuckers
My friends got a funnier version of this. The local elementary school has a service that translates automated phone messages for parents into any language.
She's bilingual, but her mother only speaks Russian and shes been teaching the kids Russian. So she gets each message, 2x, once in english, and once in Russian. But, whenever the system hits a loan word, or word that is the same in both languages, (superintendent was the word it hit when I was driving with her thw other day)
it gets derailed, and finishes in english with a really over the top Russian accent.
Not the same Russian voice mind you, it switched from a woman speeking fairly fast to a man speaking english slowly and angrily, with a Russian accent, like it was trained off of cold war movie 'Soviets or something.
That's so fucking weird! I wish we could hear a recording. That's amazing.
The agency has since apologized and says it’s trying to fix the problem.
Something about "says it's trying to fix the problem" is really funny to me 😭
Yeah, as if that kind of thing could be done by accident. Or maybe it can IDK.
This is hilarious. I work on translation software and know exactly what's wrong. They've selected a spanish voice, but not translated the content to spanish. I was playing around with these settings in our software and produced exactly this result.
It'd be hilarious if you could choose that as an option. I'd like to pick between a hundred different accents. lol
You can do this with a good deal of TTS programs.
It can be very funny to give a paragraph in English to a Portuguese or Japanese or French TTS model.
Back in the 80s, my dad worked with telephone testing equipment and had reason to bring home a DecTalk. I spent so much time fucking around with that thing. Typing things like "sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit" was so hilarious. I'd write entire scripts.
I guess the tech is to the point now where I could lose days to it now. lol.
It's nice to know that AI can still give us that good old human touch in the form of blatant racism.
Somebody go ahead and shoot me, please. I want off this mother loving ride.
So all aboard for the American tour
And maybe you'll make it to the top
And mind how you go, and I can tell you, 'cause I know
You may find it hard to get off
Many years ago I was in Latin America with two other English speakers, one who spoke Spanish well, and the third kept asking for translations..."Steve, Steve, how do I say "box"? Boxo. "Steve, Steve, how do I say "gas cap"? Capo. That went on for a while.
Roger, Roger.
What's your vector, Victor?
Over, Oveur
Do you like watching gladiator movies, Joey?
Do you ever hang out in gymnasiums?
So leave me alone!
"leava me alono!"
towerful @programming.dev English What’s your vector, Victor?
Remember_the_tooth @lemmy.world English So leave me alone! KnightontheSun @sh.itjust.works English “leava me alono!”dhork @lemmy.world English
Roger, Roger. KnightontheSun @sh.itjust.works English
I’m on smoko!
Oh dear I'm sorry I have a serious commenting problem!
This is hilarious, but in a I can’t believe how fucking absurd and stupid way.
They didn’t even bother QAing the pre recorded messages by listening once.
Or some racist fucker was responsible for this.
It was almost definitely both.
I feel terrible having done this to Picard...
I think you can hear an example here: https://www.spokanepublicradio.org/regional-news/2026-02-26/couple-asks-wa-dol-for-spanish-speaker-and-gets-a-recording-in-accented-english-instead
🤣 priceless!
You know there are vibe coders who don’t even try to run the code before uploading it. Apparently, those very same people make phone services too. Just do everything with AI, and ship it without checking anything at all. Full steam ahead, never look back.
And they get paid the same amount as normal developers. And probably get paid to fix all the mistakes they make.
I couldn't see anything there (but it sounds like some could) - anyone else has problems, try this one - it's in the latter half: https://www.tiktok.com/@maya_maybee/video/7608347117161041183
Ah, man...... I know it's a screwup and it's just hilarious.
That doesn’t sound like an AI voice in that it used generative AI. It sounds like someone just fed the English into a Hispanic voice on a regular text to speech engine. I could be wrong though.
Or maybe somebody wrote an AI prompt that said "hey make this voice file sound Spanish".
Thanks for the link.
Well…I laughed. I’ll just see myself to hell now.
“It was hilarious to us in the moment because it was so absurd,” she said Thursday. “But at the same time, it has real accessibility issues for people who call in every day and need to speak in a different language other than English.”
We are all going there together.
Oh I LOL'd my friend... I'll fix you a chair next to mine in hell
“Hey fool, we heard you like, want a license to drive and shit. Press uno if you only have one card left, hahahaha just kidding just kidding calm down. Press numero two if you want to drive. Press numero three if you’re a cabrón and have to reschedule a failed test, or press numero four if you like, wanna talk about your feeling or some shit. If you want to repeat these options press that hash homie, and thank you for calling the Washington state Department of Pendejos that get to decide that yours truly has to ride a fucking bike everywhere in the wet-ass rain. *whistles good bye”
Always grimly funny when you can basically suss out the lazy-ass prompt: "Now do the same message, but Spanish."
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2026
355 points (100.0% liked)
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