Savan To Satan, Dhruti To Dirty: 'I Am Not A Typo' Campaign Fights Autocorrect "Bias"

Autocorrect shines for everyday English but stumbles with other languages. When using Roman letters for names or words in different languages, autocorrect often replaces them with common English terms. This creates confusion and frustration, especially for names with unique spellings or accents.

According to The Guardian, frustrated by autocorrect's constant misinterpretations, a growing movement demands change. The "I am not a typo" campaign highlights how names, particularly those of Irish, Indian, and Welsh origin, get warped into common English words.

One participant, whose name autocorrects to "Satan," expresses the collective exasperation: "It's time for tech companies to fix this!" This push for improvement aims to ensure autocorrect respects the intended language, not just blindly Anglicise everything.

"It is important that technology becomes more inclusive," Savan-Chandni Gandecha told The Guardian, a British Indian content creator whose name, which means monsoon moonlight, has been autocorrected to Satan.

"My name has also been corrected to Savant," they said. "It is sometimes corrected to Savan, or the hyphen is not accepted by online forms, and that irks me."

"Even in India, my name gets corrected to 'Sawan', and it's not just an English issue. It's a multi-language thing."

The campaign has estimated that four out of 10 names of babies born in England and Wales in 2021 were deemed "wrong" or "not accepted" when tested on Microsoft's English dictionary.

"My first name isn't even that long-only six characters-but yet when it comes up as an error or it's mangled and considered an unknown entity, it's like saying that it's not just your name that's wrong, but you are," Dhruti Shah, a journalist, told The Guardian, backing the campaign after seeing her name autocorrected to "Dirty" and "Dorito."