Woman named Siri forced to change name after Apple's latest system update
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Hey Siri — how do I change my name?
A Scottish woman saw her life turned upside down after Apple made a small tweak to its digital assistant software in a recent update, leaving the Edinburgh-based personal trainer with no option but to take drastic measures.
Siri Price, 26, was annoyed enough when Apple released their voice activated digital assistant named Siri in 2011.
She loved her given name, which reportedly means “beautiful woman who leads you to victory” in Old Norse.
Apple’s Siri, on the other hand, is an acronym for “Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface”.
The program was released to help users access information and perform simple tasks; all users needed to do was utterer the phrase “Hey, Siri.”
To avoid the annoyance of setting off people’s pocket assistant anytime they approached the human Siri, Price said her friends and colleagues settled on a simple solution.
“I work in a gym with a lot of people around so everyone learned quite quickly not to say ‘Hey’ when they greet me or there would be a lot of bleeping going on,” Price told The Sun.
She explained that “it was annoying but manageable.”
That is until Apple’s recent iOS 17 update, which now allows users to drop the “Hey” and activate the virtual personal assistant by just calling “Siri,” before demanding it read you the news or add something to your grocery list.
“Now people can’t even say my name,” Price complained. “I’m absolutely fuming.”
Although the update was just released a few weeks ago, Price has already had enough.
“My workmates had to sit down and think of a workaround because people’s phones have been going off non-stop,” she said.
Price decided to change her name to Siz has begun using the nickname to avoid any further frustration and confusion — but it’s still annoying to her and those close to her.
“My boyfriend got the new update the other day and noticed it would wake his phone every time he spoke to me,” she said.
Apple’s Siri isn’t the only robot helper annoying people and forcing some to change their names.
Amazon’s Alexa has led to a decrease of babies named Alexa and pushed those who were born before the popular product hit shelves to come up with alternative monikers.
The virtual assistant was released in 2014 and reportedly named after the Library of Alexandria — one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world.
Since then, people around the world named Alexa have started a campaign — called Alexa is Human — to encourage humans with the name and pressure Amazon to change the name of their technology.
“The word Alexa has become synonymous with servant or slave,” one Alexa parent named Lauren Johnson told the BBC. “It gives people a license to treat people with the name Alexa in a subservient manner.”
Price wishes one of the world’s largest companies would have put more thought into naming their product.
“I’m sure Apple could have picked something else instead — there’s plenty of people called Siri and their lives have become just unbearable because of this,” she said.
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