AccessibilityMedium
Washington State DOL's AI Phone System Reportedly Failed to Provide Spanish-Language Service to Callers Requesting Spanish
- Occurred
- Feb 27, 2026
- Published
- Feb 27, 2026
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
For months, callers to the Washington State Department of Licensing who selected Spanish reportedly received AI-generated English responses spoken with a Spanish accent rather than actual Spanish-language service. The agency reportedly apologized and said staff configuration caused the error, which purportedly created accessibility problems for callers seeking language support.
Developers
- Amazon
Deployers
- Washington State Department of Licensing
- Amazon
Harmed parties
- Spanish language speakers
- General public of Washington State
- General public
Tags
- syndicated
Classification
Category confidence: 90%
Severity confidence: 85%
Rationale: AI system failed to provide language support, creating accessibility barriers for Spanish-speaking users.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8