Someone called Washington state's Department of Labor hotline, needed help in Spanish, pressed 2 — and got an AI speaking English in a heavy Spanish accent. Not Spanish. English. With the accent. For months.
Nobody caught it. Not at any point in the process. Callers looking for actual government help heard a bot that had clearly absorbed the assignment, misunderstood it completely, and committed hard.
The fix is in now. But before that happened, "accent as substitute for translation" made it through whatever process exists and went live on a government helpline. Which honestly raises a lot of questions about what test calls sounded like. Or if there were test calls.
Everything is fine. Press 2 to confirm you are fine.
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