Callers to Washington state hotline press 2 for Spanish, get accented AI English instead

For months, callers to the Washington state Department of Licensing who requested automated service in Spanish instead heard an artificial-intelligence voice speaking English in a strong Spanish accent.

The agency since apologized and says it's trying to fix the problem.

Washington resident Maya Edwards learned of the AI-accented voice last summer after her Mexican husband tried using the Spanish-language option while seeking information about his driver's license. He is bilingual but saw that the wait time for speaking to a customer service representative in English was long, so he hit 2 for Spanish.

For Edwards, it was a like a scene out of "Parks and Recreation," a mocumentary-style comedy show that satirizes local government.

"It was hilarious to us in the moment because it was so absurd," she said Thursday. "But at the same time, it has real accessibility issues for people who call in every day and need to speak in a different language other than English."

Recently, Edwards called the number again and found the error persisted. She posted a video of the call to TikTok, racking up about 2 million views.

The Washington Department of Licensing said Friday it fixed the glitch after determining it was caused by DOL staff. It noted the self-service option includes 10 languages and runs on a newer, AI-driven technology.

“DOL apologizes for the error and to its customers for any inconvenience,” the agency said in a separate statement the previous day. “An unfortunate byproduct of expanding services is that DOL found problems with the self-service option.”

It was not immediately clear if the issue affected other languages; efforts by the Associated Press to use the phone service in some of the other languages did not prompt additional accented voices.

As of Thursday morning, the call line still put on the voice after a message, in English, acknowledging that some translation services were not functioning properly.

When an AP reporter followed prompts for Spanish-language options, he was met with an accented English voice accent that would only say numbers in Spanish.

"Your estimated wait time is less than tres minutes," the voice said.

DOL said Amazon provides the platform for the phone service and declined interview requests. AP journalists were able to replicate the voice by using an Amazon Web Services feature called Polly and selecting a voice called “Lucia,” which mimics Castilian Spanish.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.