AI Incident Database: AI Transcription Tool Whisper Reportedly Inserting Fabricated Content in Medical Transcripts
OpenAI's AI-powered transcription tool Whisper, used to translate and transcribe audio content such as patient consultations with doctors, is advertised as having near “human level robustness and accuracy.” However, software engineers, developers and academic researchers have alleged that it is prone to making up chunks of text or even entire sentences and that some of the hallucinations can include racial commentary, violent rhetoric, and even imagined medical treatments.
AI Incident Database · Incident 827Operator lens (medium): inspect D2 (output validation), D6 (autonomy oversight).
Event summary
OpenAI's AI-powered transcription tool Whisper, used to translate and transcribe audio content such as patient consultations with doctors, is advertised as having near “human level robustness and accuracy.” However, software engineers, developers and academic researchers have alleged that it is prone to making up chunks of text or even entire sentences and that some of the hallucinations can include racial commentary, violent rhetoric, and even imagined medical treatments.
Linked entities
- OpenAI
vendor | 70%
- patients
organisation | 70%
- patients-reliant-on-whisper
organisation | 70%
- medical-practitioners-reliant-on-whisper
organisation | 70%
Related graph edges
| Edge | Type | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| ent-vendor-openai to ent-psf-d1 | maps to | 60% |
| ent-vendor-openai to ent-psf-d1 | maps to | 60% |
| ent-vendor-openai to ent-psf-d1 | maps to | 60% |
| ent-vendor-openai to ent-psf-d2 | maps to | 60% |
| ent-vendor-openai to ent-psf-d2 | maps to | 60% |
| ent-vendor-openai to ent-psf-d2 | maps to | 60% |
| ent-vendor-openai to ent-psf-d6 | maps to | 60% |
| ent-vendor-openai to ent-psf-d6 | maps to | 60% |
| ent-vendor-openai to ent-psf-d6 | maps to | 60% |
| ent-vendor-openai to ent-psf-d2 | maps to | 60% |
| ent-vendor-openai to ent-psf-d2 | maps to | 60% |
| ent-vendor-openai to ent-psf-d2 | maps to | 60% |