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WF-ZPAAV3

Facebook translates 'good morning' into 'attack them', leading to arrest

Facebook's automatic language translation software incorrectly translated an Arabic post saying "Good morning" into Hebrew saying "hurt them," leading to the arrest of a Palestinian man in Beitar Illit, Israel.

Date it happened
2017-10-17
Organisation involved
Facebook
Product, system or model
Facebook translator
Where this came from
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Attribution

This incident was imported from AI Incident Database 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.