Meta apologises after auto-translated post declares India minister 'dead'

Meta has apologised after an Indian chief minister's social media post was mistranslated on some of its platforms, falsely suggesting he had died, according to Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency.

On Tuesday, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah posted a condolence message in Kannada language on Facebook and Instagram mourning the death of an actress.

But when the posts were auto-translated into English, they mistakenly said that Mr Siddaramaiah had "passed away".

On Thursday, a Meta spokesperson told PTI that the platform had "fixed an issue that briefly caused this inaccurate Kannada translation".

"We apologize that this happened," the spokesperson added.

The original post showing him paying tribute to veteran actress B Saroja Devi was wrongly translated to say he had died.

Following the error, Mr Siddaramaiah criticised Meta's auto-translate feature for Kannada, accusing it of "distorting facts' and 'misleading users". He warned that such mistranslations were especially dangerous in the context of official communication.

On Thursday, Siddaramaiah's media advisor KV Prabhakar wrote to Meta, asking it to fix the translation and temporarily suspend Kannada auto-translation until its accuracy improves. He also urged the company to work with Kannada language experts to prevent such errors.

When the BBC checked Mr Siddaramaiah's post on Friday, its English translation read:

"The multilingual star, senior actress B Sarojadevi who passed away yesterday, paid his last respects."

Meta has not commented on whether it would suspend Kannada translations until its accuracy was improved.