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Just realised SIRI is different / worse outside the USA

TwoBytes

TwoBytes

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jun 2, 2008
3,273
2,292
I saw this
that compares SIRI to other voice assistants

The YouTuber asks Siri questions. I saw the Siri responses and decided to replicate them. I asked the same questions to SIRI and got the standard 'heres what i found on the web..'

Try

  • What's the maximum amount of caffeine you can have a one day?
  • Can you plant a pineapple in the garden?
  • Give me 5 synonyms for the word facetious
I did NOT get direct responses from Siri!

Does anyone find the same if you are outside the USA and try to ask Siri the same questions? Siri seems like it's disadvantaged heavily for use for the rest of the world. This should be big news. I’m hoping I’m wrong with this.

Here is an example to illustrate what I mean


USA video' reads out the direct answer for "Give me 5 synonyms for the word facetious"
ios USA.jpeg



Non USA siri doesn't read out answer and lists web results for "Give me 5 synonyms for the word facetious"


ios non usa Large.jpeg
 
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Wow. So Siri is heavily disabled outside the USA. This should be front page headlines.

I’ve submitted this to macrumors & 9to5 hoping they post it.
 
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TwoBytes said:
Wow. So Siri is heavily disabled outside the USA. This should be front page headlines.

I’ve submitted this to macrumors hoping they post it.
Click to expand...
That’s nothing worth a front page headline. That has been the case since day 1 and also is the case for many other „AI-Services“ like Microsoft Co-Pilot, that is still unavailable in the EU and many non-US countries.
 
Cobold said:
like Microsoft Co-Pilot, that is still unavailable in the EU
Click to expand...
You are wrong and right, depending on which Co-Pilot you mean.
It's available for companies, we (some ppl) are testing it where I work.

But basically, I agree, you are right, such features (in general) from US companies most of the time take a while until they are available outside of the US.
 
Cobold said:
That’s nothing worth a front page headline. That has been the case since day 1 and also is the case for many other „AI-Services“ like Microsoft Co-Pilot, that is still unavailable in the EU and many non-US countries.
Click to expand...
Co-pilot works in Australia.
 
I'm surprised. I'm about 70 miles from Cupertino and Siri has always just gone to web results for me, until now.
 
I'm not a fan of Siri, or digital assistants in general.
 
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This is really interesting. I live in Switzerland and I have my iPhone set to US English. I made 10 attempts. It gave me the direct answer 2 times, and it gave me the "that's what I found on the web" answer 8 times.

Is there some A/B testing going on? I don't remember Siri giving direct answers like that before seeing this thread.
 
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I have never seen this reported on the net or anyone notice any differences between SIRI
 
The synonyms one works for me in Canada but the other two don't. I don't remember Siri even being able to answer questions like these so maybe it's a new thing in testing.
 
Paddle1 said:
The synonyms one works for me in Canada but the other two don't. I don't remember Siri even being able to answer questions like these so maybe it's a new thing in testing.
Click to expand...
Have you set your iPhone to US english?
 
My Siri is not able to do anything. If I ask it to turn on the lights, it will refuse to do so and I will have to repeat my question a billion times before it finally turns on the light.

Location doesn't matter because Siri was able to do this in the past without a problem.
 
Not the first apple function and wont be the last to work differently in different places.
 
Siri read three out of 5 synonyms for the word facetious, the rest of the questions it gave the standard "I found this on the web" here in the UK.
 
I am an American living in Sweden and have a US Apple ID and she doesn't give me direct answers to those questions, just "Here's what I found" and a list of web links.
 
Whilst Siri does throw up web results Im more than happy to continue using her whilst I can give her an Irish accent 😍
 
Siri seemed to get confused when I wanted to test its reaction and asked "Hey Siri....are you Siri?" ... and then went COMPLETELY SILENT and unable to find a response. Perhaps it interpreted my words for some other word definition with the same pronunciation.
 
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