What do you do if something Siri does irritates you? Make a post on Reddit or Apple’s Support Forums? Well, if you were a celebrity, you could just go to the top and directly contact Apple CEO Tim Cook to fix things. That’s what singer/actress Barbra Streisand did when Siri mispronounced her last name.
Siri generally does a good job of pronouncing words, although I’d wager that most of us can think of at least one time when Siri’s pronunciation of a word was incorrect enough to make us laugh. Barbra Streisand did more than that when Apple’s virtual assistant mispronounced her last name.
Streisand recounted the 2016 story to BBC News in promotion of her new memoir, “My Name is Barbra,” Streisand was unhappy with the way her last name was being said by Siri. The singer didn’t like how Siri was saying the name as if it was “Streizand” instead of “Streisand.”
“My name isn’t with a Z. It’s Strei-Sand, like sand on the beach, now how simple can you get?” the singer told the interviewer.
Streisand decided to go straight to the top with her complaint. “I figured I’d better call Apple, the head of Apple, you know, Tim Cook. And he had Siri change the pronunciation of my name to be correct.”
“That’s one perk of fame,” Streisand concluded.
Now, if we can just do something about the misspelling of Barbra’s first name… (Just kidding Ms. Streisand, please don’t call my boss.)