Siri is everything: it’s informative, its dumb, it’s funny but is it rude or specifically is she rude? The voice assistant is capable of being rude and can actually also be risqué at times. Few iPhone users at Reddit were left shocked with some of Siri’s responses.
Mother’s day is right around the corner and if you’re a iPhone user you might ask Siri to define “mother”. That’s what many users did and at first Siri replied with the basic definition of the word. However, after that, Siri asked the users if they’d like to know another definition of the word and oh boy, the users were left surprised.
When the users asked Siri to dictate the second meaning of the word “mother”, the virtual assistant replied with an inappropriate and offensive meaning. “As a noun, it means ‘short for motherfucker,’ want to hear one more?” is Siri’s reply.
According to Gizmodo, Siri appears to picking the definition from the Oxford dictionary. Its unknown as to why Oxford lists an offensive and an inappropriate definition for the word. The meaning the dictionary provides is in no way directly connected to the original word.
Apple has yet to comment on the matter at hand. People are definitely not looking forward to hearing vulgar language being used by their virtual assistant. Apple can expect a lot of people to search for the same with mother’s day just around the corner.
It’s also a problematic situation for parents who have bought iPhones for their kids. Especially with kids who are 16 years old or younger. It’s not healthy for kids to pick up foul language at a stage of their life which will shape their adulthood. It’s unknown if specific language can be disabled by using parental controls on the iPhone.
After being informed of Siri’s offensive language, we decided to ask Google Assistant the same questions and we were left surprised. Even Google Assistant displays the inappropriate and offensive meaning.