Jewish advocacy organizations and social media users spoke out Tuesday after it emerged that Google’s main definition for the word “Jew” featured offensive terms.
As of around 1 p.m. ET this afternoon, a Google search for the word “Jew” caused the engine to tell users that the word is an offensive verb.
The main definition that appeared in the search results described the word Jew as “dealing with someone in a petty or petty way”, with the origin “referring to old stereotypes that associate Jews with trading and money lending.” “.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, in a statement to Fox News Digital, said: “This does not appear to be a mistake but rather a manipulation to present the antisemitic definition as the primary use of the word.”
GOOGLE’S LEADING DEFINITION OF THE WORD ‘JEW’ DISPLAYED OFFENSIVE TERMS
What the Google search engine temporarily displayed as the primary definition of the word “Jew.”
“Google owes an explanation of who did this and why,” he added.
When asked about the matter by Fox News Digital, Google flagged a tweet from Danny Sullivan, its public liaison for Search, giving his explanation of what happened.
“Our apologies. Google licenses definitions from experts in external dictionaries,” the tweet read. “We only show offensive definitions by default if they are the primary meaning of a term. As this is not the case here, we block it and provide feedback to the partner for further review.”
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The website, around 1 pm ET, changed the main definition back to the noun form.
The order of the definitions has also generated criticism on Twitter.
“Deeply concerning that @Google’s artificial intelligence does not recognize obvious anti-Semitic hate speech in featured search results for the term ‘Jew’,” the World Jewish Congress tweeted.
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“When one enters ‘Jew’ into the Google search engine, it brings up a grotesque anti-Semitic trope. This is unacceptable at @Google,” wrote StopAntisemitism, which describes itself as a “leading, non-partisan American organization fighting against antisemitism”.
“I couldn’t believe it so I googled it… hey @Google what is antisemitism?” added Elad Strohmayer, spokesman for Israel’s ambassador to the US.
