Incident 1446: KBS AI Translation Subtitles Reportedly Broadcast Profanity During Artemis II Launch Livestream

Description: During a live broadcast of NASA's Artemis II launch, KBS reportedly used AI-generated real-time translation subtitles that reportedly mistranslated aviation terms including "roger," "roll," and "pitch" into Korean profanity. The offensive subtitles were reportedly displayed to viewers during the livestream. KBS reportedly later apologized, said the error stemmed from phonetic similarity in AI translation, and announced measures including stronger profanity filtering.

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Entities

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Alleged: Generative AI developers developed an AI system deployed by Korean Broadcasting System (KBS), which harmed General public of South Korea and Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) viewers.

Alleged implicated AI system: Real-time translation subtitle generation systems

Incident Stats

Incident ID

1446

Report Count

Incident Date

2026-04-02

Editors

Daniel Atherton

Applied Taxonomies

MIT

MIT Taxonomy Classifications

Machine-Classified

Taxonomy Details

Risk Subdomain

1.2. Exposure to toxic content

Risk Domain

Discrimination and Toxicity

Entity

Timing

Post-deployment

Intent

Unintentional

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

“Roll over, you b*tch”… KBS’s live broadcast disaster featuring AI profanity subtitles

mk.co.kr

Korean TV under fire over profanity glitch in AI subtitles for Artemis II

koreaherald.com

KBS provides vulgar Arte-mistranslation during moon mission launch livestream

koreajoongangdaily.com

mk.co.kr · 2026

AI Translated

KBS has issued an official apology regarding the incident in which profanity was displayed in subtitles during the live broadcast of the Artemis 2 launch.

On the 2nd, KBS stated on its YouTube community page, "During the live broadcast of N…

koreaherald.com · 2026

“Roger, roll, pitch,” said mission control during NASA's Artemis II mission, streamed live to millions around the world.

But for some Koreans watching it in real time on the KBS TV YouTube channel, the phrase took on an entirely different m…

koreajoongangdaily.com · 2026

Korea's major broadcast channel KBS issued a public apology on Thursday for the use of accidental AI-generated profanity in its subtitles during the channel's YouTube livestream for the Artemis II launch on Wednesday.

The channel's AI tran…

Variants

A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.

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