Google has issued a formal apology after a news notification sent to users’ phones included a racial insult, a report has said. The alert was related to a controversial moment during Sunday’s (February 22) British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs). The incident occurred during the awards ceremony when an audience member with Tourette syndrome involuntarily shouted the N-word. The outburst happened while actors Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were on stage to present an award.

Deeply sorry for this mistake: Google

Google confirmed the racist word appeared in a “push alert” previewing a story about the event, as per a report in Business Insider. While early reports suggested that Artificial Intelligence (AI) was responsible for generating the slur, Google denied this.“We’re deeply sorry for this mistake. We’ve removed the offensive notification and are working to prevent this from happening again,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.Google said it caught the mistake quickly and only a “small subset of users” received the alert with the unedited racial slur. According to Business Insider, the search giant said that its push alert systems recognised a euphemism for the slur used in stories and incorrectly inserted the full word.“This system error did not involve AI. Our safety filters did not properly trigger, which is what caused this,” Google said.

BBC and BAFTA apologise for BAFTA controversy

The attendee at the centre of the controversy is John Davidson whose life inspired the film I Swear. He has Tourette syndrome, a neurological disorder. Davidson expressed that he was “deeply mortified if anyone considers my involuntary tics to be intentional or to carry any meaning.”According to the Tourette Association of America, Tourette syndrome affects millions, but only about 10% of those individuals experience coprolalia – an involuntary vocalisation of obscene or socially inappropriate words.Meanwhile, both the BBC and BAFTA are facing heavy criticism because the ceremony was aired on a two-hour tape delay, which should have provided enough time to edit out the language.“We take full responsibility for putting our guests in a very difficult situation and we apologize to all. We will learn from this, and keep inclusion at the core of all we do, maintaining our belief in film and storytelling as a critical conduit for compassion and empathy,” the BAFTAs said in a statement.“We take full responsibility for what happened. When I was made aware it was audible on iPlayer, I asked for it to be taken down. As I’m sure you’re aware we put out a statement yesterday morning apologising that the remark was not edited out prior to broadcast,” added Kate Phillips, the BBC’s chief content officer.