Siri, iPhone 4s App, Scoffs At Heavy Accents (VIDEO)
Siri, iPhone4S' new artificial intelligence personal assistant, is having trouble understanding heavy accents, specifically native Spanish speakers who speak English. Comprende?
"It can be frustrating because Siri forces me to pronounce my questions over and over again and sometimes the app won't understand me at all," said Latina Sandra Ortiz, new owner of the iPhone 4S, after recording the video, "but it always understands my husband!"
According to Apple.com, Siri on iPhone 4S lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more. Siri understands what you say, knows what you mean, and even talks back.
Unfortunately, even though Siri is supposed to understand English (United States, United Kingdom, Australia), French and German, Ortiz cannot "ask Siri to do things just by talking the way she talks." She is left disappointed with no voice recognition system to "play Pitbull" or "find the nearest laundromat" and, probably the most frustrating, "what the weather is like in Madrid."
When HuffPost Latino Voices contacted Apple to see if they were planning on working on Siri understanding native Spanish speakers with accents, the Apple representative referred to the FAQ on their website which states:
The more you use Siri, the better it will understand you. It does this by learning about your accent and other characteristics of your voice. Siri uses voice recognition algorithms to categorize your voice into one of the dialects or accents it understands. As more people use Siri and it’s exposed to more variations of a language, its overall recognition of dialects and accents will continue to improve, and Siri will work even better.
In 2012, Siri will support additional languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Italian, and Spanish, according to Apple.com.
"Maybe Siri will help with my pronunciation, who knows," Ortiz said jokingly. For now, Ortiz is determined to try and try again.
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First Posted: 11/17/11 04:47 PM ET Updated: 11/17/11 04:49 PM ET