The cleaning robot sparked a wave of public outrage as it addressed customers in the Vilnius Norfa store in Russian, reports LRT.
In one of the Norfa chain stores in Vilnius, visitors noticed that the floor-cleaning robot addressed customers in Russian. A video of the incident was recorded by one of the customers, after which the situation sparked discussion and complaints to the State Language Inspectorate.
When meeting a visitor, the robot said: "Excuse me, I am going in this direction. Please give way." According to the customer, there was no Lithuanian version of the messages, and the Russian speech echoed throughout the hall.
A representative of the Norfa chain, Darius Riliškis, acknowledged the mistake: "This is a blunder by the contractor who brought the robot with the Russian voiceover already installed. The error has been corrected."
Nevertheless, the customer contacted the State Language Inspectorate. However, the inspectorate stated that there was no formal violation of the law, as the current legislation regulates only written signs, not audio messages.
