Bing translation links Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to terrorist group, causes anger

Kit McDonald

Microsoft often prides itself on the development of its machine learning and translator capabilities,but even so, some mistakes are bound to occur. Particularly in the case of Microsoft’s Bing translator.

Bing had an unfortunate translation that led to many claiming they wanted to boycott the company entirely in the Middle East. According to Khaberni, the Bing translation of the global terrorist group “Daesh” was turned into a phrase for “Saudi Arabia”. Needless to say, it got many people upset.

The article from Basirat (via Reddit) said that users intended to boycott Microsoft for the error. But the company has already stepped in and issued an apology for the “unintentional” translation. The original article went even further to say that the correction has already been implemented as swiftly as possible as a show of good faith.