Google Translate turns te reo Māori into apocalyptic warning

  • 22/07/2018
Typing the word "dog" 18 times as if it were in te reo translates to a creepy message.
Typing the word "dog" 18 times as if it were in te reo translates to a creepy message. Photo credit: Google

Google Translate has been found to transform some phrases into doomsday warnings when translating from te reo Māori into English.

Users on Reddit found out about the spooky glitch when typing random words into the automatic translator, switching the language to Māori, and then translating it into English.

Typing the word "dog" 18 times as if it were in te reo translates to a creepy message.

"Doomsday Clock is three minutes at twelve," it began.

"We are experiencing characters and a dramatic developments in the world, which indicate that we are increasingly approaching the end times and Jesus' return."

Similar prophecies are shown when translating from other languages like Hawaiian or Somali, other Reddit users discovered.

Harvard professor Andrew Rush says the errors are caused by glitchy neural machine translations, which struggle to compute when they only have limited words to work with.

BBN Technologies senior scientists Sean Colbath said the reason religious prophecies often seemed to show was because it's likely Google uses religious texts such as the Bible to programme its translation technology, due to it being one of the world's most widely translated texts.

Newshub.