Google Translate generates worrying religious prophecies for some reason

Image: mohinimurti / shutterstock

Google Translate is, uh, having some problems.

For example, if you open the tool, select Maori as the translation language and type "dog" 16 times in the translation box, this message will appear:

"Doomsday Clock has three minutes to noon. We are the experience of the characters and dramatic development in the world "

Type another dog, and it appears:

" Doomsday Clock is three minutes to twelve We live characters and dramatic developments in the world, which indicate that we are approaching the end times and the return of Jesus "[1 9659012] Type a dog over to have the full message:

" Doomsday Clock has three minutes to noon We live characters and developments drama in the world, which indicates that we are getting closer to the end and the return of Jesus. "

Hmmm. This is not at all strange or scary.

This glitch, discovered and nicknamed TranslateGate on Reddit last year gave a disturbing amount of additional sinister messages, first reported by Motherboard.

But why? Well, there are a variety of possible reasons.

The experts told Motherboard that the algorithm could try (and fail) to rationalize the gibberish typed in the box, especially because languages ​​like Maori and Somali have a smaller body of translated texts. 19659008] Google Translate uses a translation method called Neural Machine Learning, which is based on learning from translated texts. The texts do not include gibberish (and much of the translated words and phrases probably come from religious texts), experts say that flawed translations result from machine learning that does not yet understand how to decipher unnatural text strings.

The problem is not exclusive to Maori, although the problem was originally discovered in the Eastern Polynesian language. Users on Reddit have published media of what is happening also in Somali, Greek, Khmer, French, and a variety of other non-English languages.

Google Translate declined to comment on the article.

It seems that the more times a word is typed, the deeper and more complex becomes the scary prophetic message. Here is an example with the word prophecy:

Here's another one, using spaces between each two letters with "What's your name Robot Man "and" When Can I Meet You ":

And, uh, some weirdest ones we found below – Happy Google Translation