iPhone users are no stranger to Siri’s weird answers sometimes (Just try asking the assistant about Cortana), but the latest goof-up by the AI-based voice assistant is perhaps its most explicit yet. Siri was perhaps reading too much about Samuel L. Jackson, because if you asked it to “define the word mother”, the response was not one fit for the ears of children.
Folks over at r/Apple subreddit found the uncouth response which quickly went viral. Siri on board all iOS devices, from the iPhone 5S to the iPhone X and the iPads as well devices running on MacOS, responded with an explicit definition for the word 'Mother'.
When asked to define the word ‘Mother’, Siri will first bumble out the correct definition of the word and then ask if you want to hear the second definition. Say 'yes' and you’ll hear a word that rhymes with ‘Other Ducker' (if you know what we mean).
To be frank, it wasn’t Siri’s fault. The assistant was only reading out from Oxford Dictionary that offers the explicit answer as a second definition of the word ‘mother’. But then again, as Gizmodo found out, Oxford Dictionary offers four more sub-definition of the word, but Siri skips right to the end and blurts out a meaning that is clearly labelled as a ‘vulgar slang’.
Then again, getting Siri to swear has been a sport for Apple users. Furthermore, Gizmodo reports around 10 to 50 percent of human interactions with AI assistants tend to be abusive. Siri has been trained to scold users if they swear too much. From there to imitating an angry Samuel L. Jackson is quite a feat.
Apple seems to have fixed the issue, however, as we couldn’t replicate the answer on our devices. Nevertheless, it seems Siri is quickly becoming that poorly performing student that not only can’t match up to the abilities of Alexa and Google Assistant, it also is cursing like a sailor now. Tch Tch.