South African accents are plenty, but AI really struggles to understand us; this became evident when Schalk Bezuidenhout shared the hilarious name fails the closed captions have made when he pronounces his name.
South Africa (30 March 2025) – We are absolutely giggling at tech’s latest blunder on Facebook, this time affecting Sculpt Basement, no, we mean Sculppa Said Nerd… haha ok actually we mean Schalk Bezuidenhout.
The South African comedian, who is currently touring in Australia, has been sharing his trip in short clips on social media and making use of the closed captions tools to turn his spoken words into captions for those of us who watch videos on silent while our partners sleep.
A follower of Schalk’s started noticing that every time the comedian introduced himself, the AI captions would totally get it wrong.
His intro is simple, “hello, mense, it’s Schalk Bezuidenhout” but said with a bit of South African twang. Well… the captioned alternatives have left us giggling! And Schalk is not impressed.
You can watch one of the most recently captioned videos below:
We love when South Africans can laugh at moments of frustration. It’s especially funny because it’s happening to one of South Africa’s most popular comedians on the circuit at the moment.
If you are looking for other reasons to giggle this morning, how about an American learning to speak Afrikaans? Morgan is sharing all her favourite words and her least favourite too! Read her story here.
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