iFlytek accused of using humans to power its AI translator

China’s AI champion says it was all a misunderstanding

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iFlytek is a leading provider of voice recognition technology. (Picture: Bell Wang on Zhihu)

Published: 7:45pm, 25 Sep 2018Updated: 8:40am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

iFlytek is China’s leader in voice-related technology. It’s one of just four tech companies enlisted by the Chinese government into the "national AI team", companies that will supposedly lead the country’s development of artificial intelligence, and produces tools like voice recognition and translation.

But last week iFlytek was accused of misleading people into thinking its AI software was automatically translating a speaker at a conference -- when in fact it was transcribing a human interpreter instead.

iFlytek claims that it never promised simultaneous translation, and that it was all a misunderstanding.

One of the human interpreters, Bell Wang, told his story on Quora-like site Zhihu.

Zhihu, where people in China go to ask questions and get answers

Wang was doing simultaneous voice translation at a government conference where a Japanese professor spoke in English. During the speech, two different text feeds were displayed: One to transcribes the professor’s English speech into English text, and the other apparently translates that into Chinese text. Both displays were marked with “Xunfei Tingjian” or “iFlytek Hears”.