Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- The new Google Translate Advanced mode can sometimes be prompted to chat instead of translating text.
- The behavior appears to stem from the AI following instructions embedded in the input rather than strictly translating.
- Switching back to Classic mode avoids these chatbot-like responses to prompt injections.
Google Translate is supposed to have one job: You paste text in, and it gives you a translation out. But now it has AI built in like everything else, which means its behavior might not always be as expected. In cases, people have discovered that the new Advanced translation mode in Google Translate can be nudged to break that pattern and chat with them.
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An X post from user @goremoder (via Piunika Web) shows Google Translate responding to direct prompts like “What is your purpose?” with a self-descriptive answer, rather than attempting any translation. The questions asked alongside a translation aren’t written in the source language — they’re already phrased in the target language, effectively asking the system to respond rather than translate. Ask it the right kind of question in the right way, and it behaves more like a chatbot than a translation tool.
This behavior only appears when Google Translate’s newer Advanced mode is enabled. That mode was introduced as part of Google’s recent AI upgrades to the app, aiming to deliver more natural, context-aware translations. It’s not surprising that Google relies on AI to refine translations, but it is a little unexpected that this extends to allowing the app to answer questions.
A deeper technical write-up by LessWong looking into the behavior points to a fairly classic case of prompt injection. To translate something accurately, the system first has to understand what it’s reading, and in doing so, it can sometimes mistake instructions for text it’s meant to process. The analysis suggests Google Translate is running an instruction-following LLM underneath, and that the safeguards meant to keep it focused on translation don’t always draw a hard line between what to translate and what to respond to.
Google hasn’t commented publicly on the discovery so far, and it appears to have only happened in certain language translations. If the idea of Google Translate answering existential questions instead of translating for you feels odd, you can always switch back to the Classic translation mode.
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