Apple's Siri Tells Boy to 'Shut the F*** Up'

iPhone voice system insults 12-year-old shopper
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 1, 2012 2:38 PM CST
Updated Jan 1, 2012 5:11 PM CST
Apple's Siri Voice System Tells Boy in England to 'Shut Up'
Siri, known for its acerbic sense of humor.   (Getty Images)

An eager 12-year-old experienced the techno-shock of a lifetime when Apple's Siri voice system told him to "shut the f*** up" the other day. His question: "How many people are there in the world?" The boy, Charlie Le Quesne, had grabbed a demo iPhone while shopping with his mom in Coventry, England. The phone even cursed him a second time when he posed the question again, the Huffington Post reports via the Sun. "I thought I must be hearing things," his mother said.

Why the bad attitude? Maybe Siri "finally lost her temper," muses Chris Matyszczyk on CNET. A more likely explanation was offered by store managers: that a prankster had tricked the phone into thinking the insult was the user's name. Siri has been known to sport a dry sense of humor, however. One user who told it "I need to hide a body" was given a list of grisly locales, including reservoirs, swamps, and metal foundries, TheVerge reports. (See Apple's response to Siri's "blind spot" on abortion queries.)

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