Disney’s TikTok text-to-speech censors the word “gay”

What a beautiful function text-to-speech Disney di TikTok that sounds like Rocket Raccoon, except that he refuses to utter words like “gay”, “lesbian” or “queer”. Or so some users and creators revealed before the platform solved this “problem”. But despite this, it remains to be asked why all this was possible.

Text to speech: The Disney feature censors the words “gay” and “lesbian” on TikTok

Rocket’s voice was introduced to TikTok’s text-to-speech feature last week, as part of a Disney Plus Day promotion. the voices of C-3PO and Stitch of “Lilo and Stitch”, which users will be able to unlock using secret phrases. In any case, at launch Rocket’s voice had trouble pronouncing words like “gay” and “lesbian”, even if it didn’t seem to have limits in the pronunciation of “transsexual” or “bisexual”. In summary, when trying to use one of the “forbidden” words, the text-to-speech function reported an error. And that only happened with the Disney rumors.

The problem, as you can see from the video above, only concerned the words written in their correct form. Changing a letter, Rocket’s voice immediately returned to utter what he was reading. In short, a full-fledged censorship, which turns out to be really too much for both TikTok and Disney. After the complaints of the creators, in fact, the platform did immediately back off on Disney’s text to speech feature. But neither company really commented on what happened. On the other hand, it is likely that the choice to limit the pronunciation of some words is linked to the fact that these have often been used as insults on social media. But it turns out to be somewhat unusual.

Probably, Disney tried to limit the spread of a terminology that somehow opposed the family values ​​that characterize the philosophy of the brand. But still it would turn out to be an excessive choice. In any case, fortunately Rocket Raccoon can now pronounce any words he wants, including “gay” and “lesbian”. But it will be difficult to forget such a complaint.