Google has apologised for sending out news alerts with racial slur after the BAFTA awards controversy. The tech giant has profusely apologised and says that it is 'working to prevent this from happening again.' Google pushed out a notification linking to a The Hollywood Reporter article headlined "How the Tourette's Fallout Unfolded at the BAFTA Film Awards," with the alert then inviting readers to 'see more on' - and then including the N-word spelled out in full.
The notification was screenshotted and posted by Instagram user Danny Price, who said, "What an interesting Black History month this has turned out to be." Price described the occurrence as "absolutely f---ed." Social media reactions were something of a similar tone.
Google confirmed to Variety that the notification was received by 'only a very small subset' of app users who receive push notifications, though the exact figure remains unknown. Once the alert was flagged, Google removed it from users' devices.
A Google spokesperson told Deadline, "We're very sorry for this mistake. We've removed the offensive notification and are working to prevent this from happening again."
According to Google, the system's safety filters did not correctly trigger when it "recognised a euphemism for an offensive term on several web pages, and accidentally applied the offensive term to the notification text," adding that "this system error did not involve AI."
The company added, "This was a mistake that shouldn't have happened. We're working on improved guardrails for our push notification systems, which are designed to accurately characterise content from across the web."
The big BAFTA controversy
What was meant to be a celebratory evening for British and international cinema became one of the most controversial nights in recent BAFTA history. At the Royal Festival Hall in London, actors Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo - stars of Ryan Coogler's acclaimed film Sinners - took to the stage to present the award for Best Visual Effects. As they began, Tourette's syndrome activist John Davidson, seated in the audience, involuntarily shouted the N-word. Davidson, who has Tourette's syndrome, which causes involuntary tics including blurting out insults and offensive language, was attending the ceremony as the subject of the nominated film I Swear. The incident, caught on camera and broadcast unedited on BBC One, sent shockwaves through the industry.
BAFTA was also criticised for failing to censor the N-word when it had, earlier that same evening, managed to censor a pro-Palestine speech.
Google is not the first tech giant to run into trouble with automated news alerts. Apple scrapped AI-generated alerts last year following a series of high-profile errors, including wrongly telling readers that Luigi Mangione - the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson - had shot himself. The pattern raises persistent questions about the readiness of automated systems to handle sensitive, breaking news situations - particularly those involving race, crime, and disability.
