Chinese Siri Ignores Tiananmen Square, Other Not-So Taboo Issues

Apple’s Siri technology isn’t exactly winning any awards in China thanks to its lack of understanding the language and censorship stalemates that have left users with less than full search capabilities.

A recent test of the Chinese based platform revealed that Chinese Siri is incapable of discussing Tiananmen Square. When users ask questions about the location Siri gives multiple answers that include:

“I couldn’t find any appointments related to ‘Do you know about Tiananmen,'” or “I’m sorry, the person you are looking for is not in your address book.”

While China censoring certain subjects through a web-based platform is nothing new, it turns out that Apple’s Siri platform also sensors out completely acceptable locations which led one reviewer to proclaim:

“At this point Siri’s Chinese isn’t up to snuff. She can understand basic speech, but with complex speech she doesn’t work.”

Apple’s Siri search is not exactly the best friend of Tiananmen Square, if you ask it about the location it simply provides a basic Google search.

In the meantime not all of Apple’s Siri technology is lost for Chinese speaking customers, the program is more than capable of handling basic requests such as placing calls, sending text messages and handling device searches.

At this time the Siri Chinese version is only available to beta testers and developers, when the final product is released to the public there may be changes that improve its overall use.

Have you been happy with the English-speaking version of Siri or does it need more work?