Tech giant, Meta has apologized after one of its auto-translation tools mistakenly announced the death of an Indian politician, Siddaramaiah, who is the current chief minister of Karnataka.

The error happened after Siddaramaiah shared a post in Kannada on Instagram on Tuesday, where he mourned the passing of veteran Indian actress B. Saroja Devi.

The platform’s auto-translation tool inaccurately changed the message to suggest that Siddaramaiah himself had died.

According to reports, the flawed English translation read that the chief minister had passed away and had paid respects to the late actress.

Following the error, Meta issued a statement on Thursday saying the translation issue had been corrected.

The company apologized for the mistake and promised that the problem had been fixed.

“We fixed an issue that briefly caused this inaccurate Kannada translation. We apologize that this happened”, a Meta spokesperson said.

The matter drew the attention of Siddaramaiah’s office, which expressed concern over the auto-translation tool used by Meta, especially for content written in Kannada.

In a letter to the company, his office described the tool’s translations as often wrong and sometimes very misleading.

They warned that such errors can lead to confusion, especially when they affect public statements from government officials.