Washington’s Licensing Department Faces Language Service Glitch

In Washington state, some callers requesting automated service in Spanish from the Department of Licensing encountered an unexpected issue. Instead of receiving information in Spanish, they heard an AI voice speaking in English with a pronounced Spanish accent. The department has since issued an apology and addressed the issue.

This unusual situation came to light last summer when Maya Edwards and her bilingual Mexican husband encountered it while he sought information about his driver’s license using the Spanish-language option. Faced with a lengthy wait time for English-speaking customer service, he selected the Spanish option instead. For Edwards, the experience resembled a scene from the comedy show ‘Parks and Recreation,’ which often satirizes local government.

‘It was hilarious to us at the moment because it was so absurd,’ said Edwards. ‘But at the same time, it has real accessibility issues for people who call in every day and need to speak in a different language other than English.’

Edwards later called the number again and discovered that the problem persisted. She took to TikTok to share a video of the call, which quickly went viral, amassing around 2 million views.

On Friday, the Washington Department of Licensing released a statement confirming the glitch had been fixed. The problem originated from the department’s staff, affecting a self-service option that operates on AI technology and supports 10 languages.

DOL apologizes for the error and to its customers for any inconvenience,

the agency stated, acknowledging the challenges accompanying service expansion. It was uncertain whether other languages were similarly affected, as using the service in some other languages did not produce additional accented voices.

As of Thursday morning, callers still encountered the accent after a message in English mentioned that some translation services were not functioning correctly. An AP journalist verified this by selecting Spanish-language prompts, only to hear the voice deliver a message in accented English, except when using Spanish numbers. For example, the voice stated, ‘Your estimated wait time is less than ‘tres’ minutes.’

Amazon provides the platform for the department’s phone service but declined to comment. AP journalists were able to create a similar voice using Amazon Web Services’ Polly, choosing a voice called ‘Lucia,’ designed to mimic Castilian Spanish.