When Google was asked on Wednesday to define "demon," it provided "an evil spirit or devil, especially one thought to possess a person or act as a tormenter," as well as "a forceful, fierce, or skillful performer of a specific activity," as in "a friend of mine is a demon cook."
But it also provided an option to see the definition in "police," where a "demon" was, in fact, "a police officer." It described the word as a noun from Australia and New Zealand.
But Breitbart reported that Google Translate listed "a police officer" as the primary definition of "demon," only to remove it when the agency sent a question about the result.
It also provided a secondary definition as "an evil spirit or devil."
"The web giant removed the definitions altogether after Breitbart News requested comment on the company's strange definition," the report explained.
"Users on reddit's /r/Conspiracy subreddit were the first to recently notice that when the term 'demon' was typed into Google's Translate system, the first definition that the site returns is 'a police officer,'" the report said.
In included screen shots of the results.
Google's original Translate results included the word, and a category for definitions, where the first result was "a police officer" when Breitbart raised the question. That definitions category later did not appear, with synonyms listed instead.
Breitbart referred readers to an archived version of the results.
Breitbart reported, "One Reddit user named /u/Djingus_ noted that the term 'demon' has been used in Australia as a slang term for 'detective/officer' according to a dictionary of Australian words and terms published on WikiSource.org. This doesn’t explain why Google listed it as the primary definition of the word."
The report said there was speculation that the definition resulted for an algorithm error or manipulation.
"Breitbart News previously reported in 2018 that Google briefly listed 'Nazism' as an official ideology of the California Republican Party due to the search engine relying on scraping information from Wikipedia which can be edited. At the time, Google commented on the issue stating that vandalism on Wikipedia had resulted in the incorrect search results," the report said.
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