#BugAlert: Google's Gboard is suggesting explicit words to users
Gboard, the fancy keyboard app operated by Google, appears to have run into a crazy bug. The issue, first reported by Mashable, has wrecked the typing suggestion system of the app and is showing explicit and offensive words to users - even when they keep the settings required to block harmful phrases enabled. Here are more details.
Users typing innocuous sentences running into explicit suggestions
As reported by a few Gboard users on Twitter, typing even innocuous words using the keyboard displayed offensive words in the suggestions section. The problem appeared specific to the 'English India' language and the suggestions, as one of the users pointed out, were highly inappropriate words. They even cited an example where typing the word 'uski' resulted in derogatory slurs as suggestions.
Here's how it showed inappropriate suggestions
Typically, Gboard uses typing style to give suggestions
Gboard typically works by learning from the typing style of the user and suggests words accordingly. This means if you tend to use offensive words too often, it learns that and shows those words in suggestions. And, in the case of no access to the personal dictionary, the app uses crowdsourced data from other users to give suggestions, which are not always highly accurate.
But, here, it showed offensive words in all cases
As noted by Mashable and our team here at NewsBytes, the offensive words kept appearing in suggestions, even after deleting all the typing data and words registered by the keyboard on multiple devices. Also, Google's specific option to 'Block offensive words' in Gboard's settings did not work and slurs appeared even after the setting was enabled.
No word from Google on the matter
So far, Google has neither acknowledged the issue nor said anything about when a fix could be expected. This is rather disappointing from the internet giant, given that Gboard is used on millions of smartphones and many of those users are young, highly vulnerable teenagers. A similar problem had surfaced two years back also but was quickly fixed by the Gboard team then.
