Genoa corruption inquiry: press reports say speech-to-text software turned a suspect's 'lawful financing' into 'unlawful' in his interrogation transcript
In May 2024 a businessman questioned as a suspect in the Genoa prosecutors' inquiry into alleged bribes to the president of the Liguria region was recorded in the official transcript of his interrogation before the preliminary-investigations judge as saying that the president wanted 'finanziamenti illeciti' (unlawful financing). According to Corriere della Sera, on receiving the transcript he wrote to the judge to contest it, saying he had said 'finanziamenti leciti' (lawful financing); his lawyer said the legally valid handwritten record did not contain the word. Il Post reports that the passage had been highlighted in the headlines of many newspapers in the following days as confirming the prosecutors' accusations, and that a second hearing of the audio was needed to settle it. La Repubblica reported on 27 May 2024 that, at an ad hoc hearing, the businessman confirmed he had said 'leciti', with the prosecutor's agreement according to his lawyer, and the judge took note; it wrote that the fault appears to lie with the automatic software that transcribes words spoken in court. Il Post reports that checks found the error was not human and that the transcript had been produced by speech-to-text software. The software is not named.
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources · Added 25/10/2026