Meta has issued an apology after a mistranslation on its platforms falsely claimed that Indian Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had died.

The error occurred on Tuesday when the Karnataka state leader posted a condolence message on Facebook and Instagram in Kannada, mourning the death of veteran actress B Saroja Devi. However, the platforms’ auto-translation feature inaccurately rendered the message in English, stating that Siddaramaiah had “passed away”.

According to the Press Trust of India (PTI), the original post was intended to pay tribute to the late actress but was mistranslated to imply that the chief minister himself had died.

By Thursday, a spokesperson for Meta confirmed to PTI that the mistake had been rectified. “We fixed an issue that briefly caused this inaccurate Kannada translation,” the spokesperson said. “We apologise that this happened.”

Following the incident, Siddaramaiah publicly criticised Meta’s auto-translate functionality, particularly for Kannada, accusing it of “distorting facts” and “misleading users”. He stressed that such inaccuracies were especially dangerous in the realm of official communication.

In response, Siddaramaiah’s media advisor, KV Prabhakar, wrote to Meta on Thursday, calling for the Kannada auto-translation feature to be temporarily suspended until its reliability could be assured. He also urged the company to collaborate with Kannada language experts to avoid future errors.

When the BBC reviewed the translated version of the chief minister’s post on Friday, it read: “The multilingual star, senior actress B Sarojadevi who passed away yesterday, paid his last respects.”

Meta has not commented on whether it plans to suspend Kannada translations while working to improve their accuracy. (AriseNews TV)