For months, callers to the Washington state Department of Licensing who have requested automated service in Spanish have instead heard an AI voice speaking English in a strong Spanish accent. The agency has since apologized and says it’s trying to fix the problem.
AI is putting threatening to put The Onion out of business, not because The Onion articles can be written by AI, rather AI has just made this kind of satire nearly obsolete. The Onion is forced to retreat into existential screaming into the void humor, which they have done magnificently in the face of an unstoppable foe. The Onion will prevail and outlive AI though, mark my words!
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
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.
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
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.
🤣 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.
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
Always grimly funny when you can basically suss out the lazy-ass prompt: “Now do the same message, but Spanish.”
“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”
