Apple’s voice assists Siri triggered public angers on China’s social media after China’s netizens spotted a bug that Siri skipped reading out China’s tally of gold medal wins at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

Detail:

Users of China’s social media are condemning Apple’s Siri for its misconduct, alleging that Siri intentionally insulted Chinese Olympic delegation by missing out Olympic gold medal tally of China.

China’s netizens uploaded video screen captures from their iPhones on China’s social media Weibo, showing that Siri ignore China’s tally of gold medal when read out the Tokyo summer Olympics medal ranked by country.

“Siri read out that Japan won 11 gold medals, followed by the U.S with 10 and Russia with seven, but it intentionally ignored tally of 10 gold medals won by China.

In response to the issue, Apple’s Siri said that the glitch was caused by 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.

Siri, a voice-assistant function in Apple’s smartphones and laptops, enable users to dictate text messages on their devices.

Context:

China is Apple’s third-largest market by revenue. Despite its strong user base in China, Apple has suffered some setback amid the escalating tensions between China and the U.S over tech and trade.

In August, 2020, Chinese artificial intelligence company Shanghai Zhizhen Intelligent Network Technology, also known as Xiao-I, has filed a USD1.4 billion patent-infringement lawsuit against Apple, the move came three months after the U.S initiated sanctions on Huawei that banned the U.S supplier from doing business with the Chinese telecommunication giants.

In the lawsuit filed in the Shanghai High People’s Court, Shanghai Zhizhen alleged that Apple’s voice recognition technology Siri infringes on a patent that it applied for in 2014.

 As part of lawsuit, the Chinese AI company ask Apple to stop manufacturing, sell, import and use of products that contain Siri, which would most of Apple’s product including iPhones, iPads and Macs.

In June, China’s Supreme Court ruled that Shanghai Zhizhen’s patent was valid, which ended an eight-year-long legal battle between two companies. Shanghai Zhizhen sued Apple since 2012, a year after Apple introduced Siri as an iPhone 4s feature. Shanghai Zhizhen first applied for the patent, which it describes as a chat robot system that can complete conversations in natural language in 2014.