Twelve year old Charlie Le Quesne and his mother were in for a shock on their recent visit to a Tesco store in the U.K., reports The Sun. While testing out Siri with a simple question, the iPhone 4S on display began swearing at Charlie, telling him to shut the f*** up.
A lad of 12 who tried out the new iPhone 4S in Tesco was stunned when it told him: “Shut the f*** up, you ugly t***.” The phone’s Siri system, which answers spoken questions, came back with the foul-mouthed insult when Charlie Le Quesne asked: “How many people are there in the world?”
Appalled at the language she was hearing from the device, Charlie’s mother Kim tried it again, and got the same response. That’s when she spoke to the manager to voice her complaint.
The manager promptly turned off the display unit, and determined that someone had tampered with the device as a practical joke. Unfortunately, not everyone sees the humor in telling a 12-year- old to “Shut the f*** up, you ugly t***.” Because there isn’t any humor.
While unfortunate, these things do happen. People download porn onto display phones, load up inappropriate videos, or any number of other things as stupid and ill-conceived way to get a few chuckles.
In the interest of explaining the full story, it’s actually pretty easy to make an iPhone 4S do something like this. Simply changing the primary contact’s nickname to whatever you like will do the trick, or simply asking Siri “Call me (insert ridiculous statement here).” Someone had simply told Siri to refer to them as the phrase in question.
Tesco has reportedly launched an investigation to find out who may have pulled the prank, and has sent the iPhone back to Apple for “diagnostic tests.”
