Motorists in the US state of Washington shared videos on TikTok showing how, after inviting callers to press 2 for assistance in Spanish, the helpline simply switched accent instead of language.

Local resident Maya Edwards told KOMO: “It was hilarious to us in the moment because it was so absurd.

“But at the same time, it has real accessibility issues for people who call in every day and need to speak in a different language other than English.”

The Washington Department of Licensing says it has now fixed the issue, which it attributed to staff error.

Gizmodo speculates staff wrongly believed that choosing a Spanish voice on Amazon’s text-to-speech system would include automatic translation.