Siri, the voice-command-based virtual assistant from Apple that is available on almost all of Apple’s devices, faced the wrath of social media users in China this week after the platform was unable to read out China’s tally of gold-medal wins at the ongoing Tokyo Olympics.
Apple’s Siri says that the issue was because of a technical setting that only allowed Siri to read out the name of one country if two countries have the same amount of gold medals. The problem had been fixed and Siri was able to read out the correct tally for China.
Chinese social media users started uploading videos on Weibo showing the official Olympic gold medal tally of China. The video showed that Japan won 11 gold medals, followed by the US and China with 10 gold medals each, and Russia with seven gold medals, but Siri was unable to read out China’s number of wins.
People started speculating that the US-based tech giant may have deliberately snubbed China because of the ongoing tensions related to tech and trade. Apple has a strong presence in China but has suffered pushback because of the pressure piled by the United States on Chinese companies, especially Huawei Technologies, which is now barred from using US-origin technology. Currently, China is Apple’s third-largest market by revenue.
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