Siri is Censored in Chinese?

Is Siri truly being censored in China? Or is it just a failure to understand the language, a developer's glitch? When Chinese users ask the software about Tiananmen Square, they are given the runaround by Apple's voice recognition software now standard on all new iPhones. It is not clear whether this misunderstanding is intentional or not. Apple's voice recognition technology is still new to Chinese and, according to Apple, is still in the development stage.

In a recent video news piece from the Wall Street Journal, according to users, the software works well with basic tasks. But other requests give the software some trouble. For the most part, a majority of the glitches seem to be unrelated to the political content. Also, the voice in Chinese has been compared to that of a more robotic announcer.

Time will tell whether Siri is politically censored or not. For now, though, it is too soon in the developmental stage to really tell. Chinese technology users are certainly more sensitive and, some would say, paranoid when it comes to political censorship. The government prompts this paranoia with their detrimental track record. Honestly, would anyone be surprised if the Chinese government did censor Siri?

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