Facebook translates 'Good morning' as 'Attack them'
A Palestinian man was arrested by Israeli police for a post on Facebook that was inaccurately translated by the technology platform's automated translation service. The man had posted a selfie on Facebook with the caption “يصبحهم”, or 'yusbihuhum,' which translates as 'good morning.' But Facebook's translation system translated the caption as 'attack them' in Hebrew and 'hurt them' in English, prompting police to arrest him after they were notified of the post and concluded he was planning a vehicle attack. The Palestinian was later released and the police apologised. According to Haaretz , no Arabic-speaking officer had read the man’s post. This incident highlights the potential consequences of relying on automated translation services, especially in sensitive contexts. It also raises concerns about bias and accuracy in AI technologies, particularly regarding language and cultural understanding. System 🤖 Meta Translate 🔗 Operator: Developer: Meta/Facebook Country: Israel Sector: Media/entertainment/sports/arts; Govt - police Purpose: Translate text Technology: NLP/text analysis; Neural network; Deep learning; Machine learning Issue: Accuracy/reliability; Bias/discrimination
- Date it happened
- 2017-10-01
- Product, system or model
- Meta Translate
This incident was imported from AIAAIC and is used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.
This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.