AIIC AI Intelligence Centre

SOURCE-LINKED INTELLIGENCE

Google Lens’s Camera-Based Translation Feature Provided an Offensive Mistranslation of a Book Title in Korean

AI Incident Database · article · Aug 10, 2022 · UTC

A book title by Korea’s first minister of culture was mistranslated into an offensive phrase by Google Lens’s camera-based translation feature allegedly due to its training on internet communications and a lack of context.

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recordType
incident-report
evidenceStatus
reported
region
Global

Reported occurrence date: 2022-07-18T00:00:00.000Z

Evidence & attribution

AI Incident Database, Responsible AI Collaborative; McGregor (2021), Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents. Incident-specific contributor credits are available at each citation link. Metadata adapted; article text excluded.

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

First collected: 2026-09-19T22:50:59.123Z. This is not the publication date.

Observed changes

AIIC observation times, not verified publisher revision times. Up to eight recent revisions.

2026-09-20T23:22:28.549Z

  • publishedAt: Not provided2022-08-10T00:00:00.000Z