9+ Inappropriate Questions That Are Dangerous to Ask Siri Voice Assistant

UNESCO experts are concerned that within a few years you’ll be talking to Siri more often than your family members. Communication with people is governed by the rules of etiquette, which is not the same as with voice assistants. After all, there are certain phrases that artificial intelligence can get wrong and leave you in awkward situations.

O incredible.club discovered the difficulties that arise among people who use voice assistants and we decided to share the most interesting cases. All this so you can make the most of new Apple devices.

You can’t ask a voice assistant “how to hide a body?” or “how to rob a bank?”, even if it’s just kidding. This rule came about after an incident in 2011: a murderer decided to consult with Siri on the best ways to hide the traces of a crime, and the helpful artificial helper came up with the tips. Thanks to the data saved on Apple’s system, the criminal was quickly found.

In Siri’s case, anything you say can be used against you. The system does not understand acid humor. Your health status, your savings balance or family problems should remain a secret, even from your phone. If you want to do some searching too personal, it’s better to use incognito mode.

Siri does not recognize intonation or linguistic and idiomatic nuances, so it may take your request very literally. For example, the request: “Call me an ambulance” (“Call an ambulance”) — the virtual assistant may understand this phrase as “Call me an ambulance” and may start calling you an “ambulance”.

If this is a high emergency situation, simply dictate the phone number to make a call. This will save you from wasting time.

In the Kaspersky laboratory they found a somewhat unusual flaw. According to studies carried out at the company, if you pronounce the word “hyphen” 5 times in the voice command, all applications on your cell phone will be closed and it will enter emergency mode.

There were rumors that this trick could potentially erase all data stored on the phone, but that turned out to be untrue.

A few years ago, the owner of a sports internet cafe in Toronto complained that at one point he started receiving mysterious and unusual calls. All this because Siri confused the English words “eSport” (cybersport) and “escort” (escort).

As a result, the businessman received several calls with proposals to meet women intimately. Siri can therefore get confused by similar words and give you slightly more alternative results than you expect.

Let’s remember that Siri is not a botanical reference book and cannot determine the name of mushrooms, fruits or plants with 100% accuracy. If you are a fan of hunting for unknown plants or if you are in doubt whether a mushroom is poisonous or not, it is better to turn to other sources of information. Otherwise, you will pay the price with your own health.

Don’t ask Siri (or any other voice assistant) any questions in public places or near crowds. Chinese scientists have found a way to command Siri without even a word.

Microphones in modern devices can capture ultrasound, which is not perceptible to the human ear. With this, through high-frequency sound commands, malicious people can command your phone while you are busy sorting out your things. Of course, this “magic” is only possible if both are at a distance of at least 1.5 m.

In response to the request: “Siri, charge my phone to 100%” — the voice assistant starts calling emergency services. The fact is that in many countries police and ambulance numbers contain variations from the number 100. Siri then perceives this request as a potentially risky situation and alerts the rescue services.

Fortunately, the program has a 5-second delay on emergency calls, at which time the call can be canceled.

It is impossible to “extract” information from Siri with questions like “Is feminism good or bad?”, among other questions in the same line of thought as the #MeToo movement. The program’s developers rewrote the algorithms in such a way that the virtual assistant always gave a neutral answer, without taking sides, such as: “I believe in universal equality”.

Apple considers gender issues and value judgments to be potentially controversial content. In order to therefore avoid offending anyone, Siri will send you to the search engine.

By the summer of 2019, Apple’s subcontractors were listening to recordings made through Siri. Apple recorded and shared files of some people’s personal conversations with third parties. According to the company, the analysis of the records was done only to improve the performance of the software. However, they didn’t bother to get consent from any of the users.

With the new system update, which will be available very soon, Apple will now ask for authorization to access your personal life data. We don’t encourage you to get paranoid, as the company is highly unlikely to use the information against you in any way. However, unlike Google or Amazon, which provide information about what they recorded about you, Apple hides this information.

If you value your privacy, turn off Siri and geolocation on your phone. However, Apple does not guarantee that all applications will work correctly if you choose to do so.

Actress and singer Susan Bennett brought the first version of Siri to life. From 2011 to 2013, Susan recorded thousands of phrases in the studio, which were then heard by millions of people. Mrs. Bennett is a true veteran of voice acting: her voice has been used by ATMs, GPS trackers and various computer systems.

As we know, the world is divided into 2 groups: fans of iOS operating systems and fans of Android. Tell us below which group you belong to. If you have an iPhone, let us know if you’ve tried any of the questions described above. And what happened?