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https://www.productionai.institute/graph/events/evt-aiid-216

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Production AI Institute public record · AI Incident Database: WeChat’s Machine Translation Gave a Racist English Translation for the Chinese Term for “Black Foreigner” · observed 2022-08-17
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AI Incident Database: WeChat’s Machine Translation Gave a Racist English Translation for the Chinese Term for “Black Foreigner”

The Chinese platform WeChat provided an inappropriate and racist English translation for the Chinese term for “black foreigner” in its messaging app.

AI Incident Database · Incident 216

Operator lens (medium): inspect D8 (provider fallback).

Confidence
82%
Sources
3
Entities
2
Detected
detected 1432d ago

Event summary

The Chinese platform WeChat provided an inappropriate and racist English translation for the Chinese term for “black foreigner” in its messaging app.

D8

Linked entities

  • wechat

    organisation | 70%

  • black-wechat-users

    organisation | 70%

Related graph edges

EdgeTypeConfidence
ent-aiid-wechat to ent-psf-d8maps to60%
ent-aiid-wechat to ent-psf-d8maps to60%
ent-aiid-wechat to ent-psf-d8maps to60%
ent-aiid-wechat to ent-psf-d2maps to60%
ent-aiid-wechat to ent-psf-d2maps to60%
ent-aiid-wechat to ent-psf-d2maps to60%
ent-aiid-wechat to ent-psf-d7maps to60%
ent-aiid-wechat to ent-psf-d7maps to60%
ent-aiid-wechat to ent-psf-d7maps to60%
ent-aiid-wechat to ent-psf-d8maps to60%
ent-aiid-wechat to ent-psf-d8maps to60%
ent-aiid-wechat to ent-psf-d8maps to60%

Explore the graph

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Event dates

  • Happened 10 Oct 2017

  • Detected 17 Aug 2022

Sources

  • AI Incident Database - Incident 216

    secondary | checked 9 July 2026

    Open source
  • China's WeChat app translates 'black foreigner' to N-word

    primary | checked 17 Aug 2022

    Open source
  • WeChat Apologizes for Translating ‘Black Foreigner’ as N-Word

    secondary | checked 30 May 2022

    Open source
Cite this record

"AI Incident Database: WeChat’s Machine Translation Gave a Racist English Translation for the Chinese Term for “Black Foreigner”." https://www.productionai.institute/graph/events/evt-aiid-216 (observed 2017-10-10; retrieved 2026-07-19). PAI.

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