14 DAY TRIAL // Digital assistants can do all sorts of things, like setting reminders and telling the forecast, but as a BBC weather presenter discovered this week, they can even wake up all of a sudden to contradict you.
Meteorologist Tomasz Schafernaker was discussing the weather conditions on live TV, warning of low temperature and snow in the United States. It was the moment Siri decided to make an appearance, waking up all of a sudden to tell everyone watching the BBC there was “no snow in the forecast.”
Both Schafernaker and the anchor laughed off the incident, emphasizing there would actually be snow in the United States and Siri was wrong because it didn’t know the location they were talking about.
Siri not manually triggered
Schafernaker says in a short post on Twitter that he didn’t manually activate Siri, admitting later in the same thread that the “Raise to speak” option was actually enabled.
Beginning with watchOS 5, the Apple Watch Series 3 and newer models can activate Siri with a new option called “Raise to speak,” so users no longer need to say the “Hey, Siri” command.
The “Raise to speak” feature can be activated from the Settings app on the Apple Watch > Siri > Raise to speak. If this feature is activated, it’s enough for the wearer to just raise the wrist and Siri would wait for input. In this case, the input was the weather forecast, and this is how the digital assistant started talking all of a sudden on live TV.
But how come the differences in the weather conditions indicated by Siri and the presenter? The digital assistant was most likely set to a different location, other than the one shown on screen and which the presenter provided the forecast for.
When you're a weather presenter and your watch contradicts your forecast....😆 🔊Sound on👇 pic.twitter.com/YXojblKcIQ — BBC Weather (@bbcweather) November 28, 2019