Google’s ‘woke’ new auto-correct raises eyebrows

A new feature on Google suggesting politically correct alternatives for words such as “annoyed”, “landlord”, and “man-hours” has drawn the ire of some users.

Google docs has turned woke, with a new feature suggesting corrections to words such as “landlord”, “motherboard” and “man-hours”.

Even non-gendered words, such as “annoyed”, “the elderly”, “dummy” and “victim of” are given a new-age makeover by the tech giant’s in-house word processing software.

The AI auto-correct, which was first flagged a year ago, is starting to be noticed by users, with many less than impressed.

The changes were noticed this week by one Google docs user, Rebecca Baird-Remba (@thecitywanderer). She was writing a property story and found “landlord” was seen as inappropriate by her Google document. Suggestions for alternate words included “property owner” and “proprietor”.

As Ms Baird-Remba wrote on Twitter on April 19: “been typing the word ‘landlord’ for years in gdocs but I guess they are rolling out a whole new raft of writing suggestions using purple underlines + pop-ups bc this just happened to me today for the first time”.

The style guide is also picking up terms viewed as potentially offensive, such as “crazy”, “dummy” and “sanity-check”.

The tech giant is using an algorithm to suggest inclusive alternatives in Google Docs.

Instead of writing “it cripples the service”, users are given a suggestion, such as “it slows down the service”.

Other suggestions include changing “man-hours” to “person-hours” and “fireman” with “firefighter”.

Other users have found the word “annoyed” was auto-changed to “angry” or “upset” and “billionaire” to “person of means”.

Ageist terms such as “the elderly” or “senior citizens” are also now not acceptable, with words such as “older adults” and “ageing population” suggested.

Socially charged terms such has blacklist, native and first-class should be replaced with other terms, along with other non-acceptable words including “victim of”, “suffering from” and “physically challenged”.

Tim Marchman and Samantha Cole from vice.com put lines from Martin Luther King Jr, former US President John F Kennedy and even the King James Bible into Google docs, only to have suggestions made to iconic phrases. However, a speech from Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, which contained the “n-word”, wasn’t changed.

A blog post from Google explaining the changes said writers would be given ways to make their writing “more impactful”.

“Potentially discriminatory or inappropriate language will be flagged, along with suggestions on how to make your writing more inclusive and appropriate for your audience,” Google said.

“These new features offer a variety of stylistic and writing suggestions as you compose documents. Suggestions will appear as you type and help guide you when there are opportunities to avoid repeated or unnecessary words, helping diversify your writing and ensuring you’re using the most effective word for the situation,” the tech giant said.

“We hope this will help elevate your writing style and make more dynamic, clear, inclusive, and concise documents,” it said.

Originally published as Google’s ‘woke’ new auto-correct raises eyebrows