YouTube's AI captions insert explicit language in children's videos
YouTube's automated captioning system has been found to insert explicit language into videos intended for children. A study of over 7,000 videos from top kids' channels found that 40% contained taboo words in captions, with 1% including highly inappropriate terms like 'bitch' and 'rape'. The AI mishears words such as 'brave' as 'rape' and 'corn' as 'porn'. YouTube acknowledged the issue and said it is working to improve the system.
- Organisation involved
- YouTube
- Product, system or model
- YouTube automated captions
This incident was imported from wired.com. 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.