Potato, potato. Toma6to, I'm going to kill you... How a typo can turn an AI translator against us

Neural-network-based language translators can be tricked into deleting words from sentences or dramatically changing the meaning of a phrase, by strategically inserting typos and numbers. Just like twiddling pixels in a photo, or placing a specially crafted sticker near an object, can make image-recognition systems mistake bananas for toasters, it is possible to alter the translation of a sentence by tweaking the input. This isn't like altering "The black cat" to "The black cap", and making an English-to-French translation AI change its output from "Le chat noir" to "Le chapeau noir." That change is to be expected. No, we're talking about, for example, tweaking "Er ist Geigenbauer und Psychotherapeut" (He is a violin maker and psychotherapist) to "Er ist Geigenbauer und Psy6hothearpeiut", and getting the translation: "He is a brick maker and a psychopath."