'That is rubbish': Sunrise host Sam Armytage slams Kmart's apology after customers were banned from using Christian terms in its photo booths - but 'Islam' and 'Koran' had the all clear
- Sunrise host Samantha Armytage slammed Kmart following photo kiosk blunder
- Words such as Jesus, church and Bible were replaced with asterisks in captions
- It was not just religious words affected, with the word Canadian also banned
- Kmart said it was an error and it would be fixed with a software update
Sunrise host Samantha Armytage has slammed Kmart after photo printing kiosks at its stores appeared to ban Christian terms.
Armytage directed criticism at the retail giant during the Thursday morning segment after the store blamed the error on a system glitch.
'Kmart has come out this morning and said it was a technical glitch, that is rubbish,' she said.
When customers tried to caption photos with the forbidden words, a message came up on screen saying 'profanity has been detected in text and substituted with ****'.
Words such as Jesus, church, Bible and Christian used in captions were deemed to be profanities and replaced with asterisks, The Daily Telegraph reported.
Sunrise host Samantha Armytage has slammed Kmart after photo printing kiosks at its stores appeared to ban Christian terms
When customers tried to caption photos with the forbidden words, a message came up on screen saying 'profanity has been detected in text and substituted with ****'
The words Jewish and Allah were also banned but mosque, Islam and Koran were not.
By Thursday morning the error had been fixed, though Armytage invited guests to her show such as social commentator Jane Caro to weigh in on the incident.
Ms Caro said she was willing to give the store the benefit of the doubt.
'I'm prepared to believe it was a technical glitch. I can't see why they would do it otherwise. There's no benefit in doing that.
'And Allah was also banned as well, unless there was some attempt to avoid blaspheming or using it inappropriately that went horribly wrong, it makes no sense for them to actually program this deliberately.
'That would be weird and stupid.'
Ms Caro said she accepted it had been a programming error that came from an otherwise well-intended attempt to avoid customers from misusing the words.
'The words that weren't allowed were set too broadly, and anything that could be used as a swear word. Unfortunately people do use such words as swear words.
'It's overreach, it's silly.'
The kiosks are run by Kodak which recently installed software to detect profanities.
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Kodak sales and marketing manager Gavin Wulfsohn said the list of profanities was wrong and would be fixed.
A spokesman for Kmart said: 'We would like to sincerely apologise for this system error, which has been rectified overnight. It in no way reflects our views as a business.
'At Kmart, we support diversity and inclusiveness irrespective of race, religion, age, gender, ethnicity, ability, appearance or attitude, and we want our teams and stores to reflect the communities in which we operate'.
Viewers on Sunrise were left convinced of a left-wing conspiracy to ban Christian words.
One named Dave Guinnett wrote: 'Someone in Kmart is a left wing Christian hating flog'.
Another added: 'I just banned Kmart'.
But others noted that the word Allah was banned and insisted it was a 'genuine error'.
Words such as Jesus, church, Bible and Christian used in captions were deemed to be profanities and replaced with asterisks
The words Jewish and Allah were also banned - but mosque, Islam and Koran were not
A spokesman for the company said it was a system error and would be fixed. Pictured: A Sydney Kmart
