Woman says she was forced to change her name after Apple's latest system update

2023-10-06 21:22

A new update has meant that Apple users can now say just "Siri" instead of "Hey Siri", but this modification has proven troublesome for one woman who has had to change her name as a result. Siri Price, a 26-year-old personal trainer from Edinburgh is used to having the same name as Apple's voice-activated digital assistant. While Apple's Siri stands for “Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface," the name Siri is also Old Norse and apparently means “beautiful woman who leads you to victory". Since sharing the same name, the old version of the voice assistant would be triggered by saying the words "Hey Siri". “I work in a gym with a lot of people around so everyone learned quite quickly not to say ‘Hey’ when they greet me or there would be a lot of bleeping going on," she told The Sun. “It was annoying but manageable." But now this command is just "Siri," for the voice to be activated so it means people cannot say Siri's name without causing the voice feature to activate on their phones. As you can imagine, Siri is pretty annoyed with this new update. "Now people can’t even say my name. I’m absolutely fuming," she said. "My workmates had to sit down and think of a workaround because people’s phones have been going off non-stop." Consequently, it means Siri has had to come up with a different name for herself - Siz. “I’m sure Apple could have picked something else instead — there’s plenty of people called Siri and their lives have become just unbearable because of this," Siz added. Although Siz is not alone as those with the name Alexa possibly have similar feelings as their name is also the name of Amazon's virtual assistant. When this happened, it resulted in the name dramatically declining in popularity - perhaps due to parents releasing their child may have the same problem as Siri's. Something for tech companies to keep in mind when they're naming their voice assistants... Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

A new update has meant that Apple users can now say just "Siri" instead of "Hey Siri", but this modification has proven troublesome for one woman who has had to change her name as a result.

Siri Price, a 26-year-old personal trainer from Edinburgh is used to having the same name as Apple's voice-activated digital assistant.

While Apple's Siri stands for “Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface," the name Siri is also Old Norse and apparently means “beautiful woman who leads you to victory".

Since sharing the same name, the old version of the voice assistant would be triggered by saying the words "Hey Siri".

“I work in a gym with a lot of people around so everyone learned quite quickly not to say ‘Hey’ when they greet me or there would be a lot of bleeping going on," she told The Sun.

“It was annoying but manageable."

But now this command is just "Siri," for the voice to be activated so it means people cannot say Siri's name without causing the voice feature to activate on their phones.

As you can imagine, Siri is pretty annoyed with this new update.

"Now people can’t even say my name. I’m absolutely fuming," she said.

"My workmates had to sit down and think of a workaround because people’s phones have been going off non-stop."

Consequently, it means Siri has had to come up with a different name for herself - Siz.

“I’m sure Apple could have picked something else instead — there’s plenty of people called Siri and their lives have become just unbearable because of this," Siz added.

Although Siz is not alone as those with the name Alexa possibly have similar feelings as their name is also the name of Amazon's virtual assistant.

When this happened, it resulted in the name dramatically declining in popularity - perhaps due to parents releasing their child may have the same problem as Siri's.

Something for tech companies to keep in mind when they're naming their voice assistants...

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Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.