Siri’s been a disappointment so far, but she may have just gone from remedial performer to deviant, Ricky-Gervais-impersonating insult comic. When asked how many people there are in the world, a demo iPhone in a store in England told a 12-year-old boy to “Shut the f*ck up, you ugly t***.” Charming.
So what happened here wasn’t actually a feature of Apple’s maligned personal assistant software. Some pranksters had programmed the phrase into the demo iPhone as the user name referenced by Siri when she replies to a question by name. Which is fun! And probably not ok for a demo unit. But fun!
Don’t worry, though. Appropriate overreaction is already underway. The boy’s mum called the quip “verbal abuse,” and the store said it would be going back to Apple for “diagnostic tests.” Meanwhile, the 12-year-old kid was last seen brainstorming fart jokes to program into the remaining floor models at the store. [Sun]