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Kuala Lumpur: Human resources minister Steven Sim has urged the public to keep up with developments in artificial intelligence (AI) or risk barking up the wrong tree, following the stir over the translation of a congratulatory message by Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM).

"You don’t need to be an IT expert or the Bank Negara Malaysia governor to realise that the post was actually an auto-generated translation by Facebook of the original post in Malay," he said when speaking about the rapid evolution of AI at the launch of the National Future Skills Framework in Kuala Lumpur.

Sim added that the translation was done by Meta, which owns the social networking platform.

"It was probably AI, nothing whatsoever to do with RTM."

Social media users had been quick to criticise the government-owned broadcasting station after the word "congratulations" was wrongly translated as "condolences"..

RTM later explained that the original text in Malay had been auto-translated.

Communications minister Fahmi Fadzil meanwhile said that Meta’s translation had led to the public accusing RTM of making inappropriate posts, resulting in some telling the minister to "hang himself"..

RTM has since lodged a police report over the matter and contacted Facebook’s parent company regarding the error.

Speaking today, Sim also highlighted the importance of media literacy, citing Jelutong MP RSN Rayer’s speech in the Dewan Rakyat on Tuesday where he showed an AI-generated video of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim promoting an investment scheme during the debate on amendments to the Personal Data Protection Act 2010.

"With technology like this, even regular scam call centre workers may go out of job soon."

He urged the public to keep up with developments, warning that failure to do so would result in them being left behind.