iPhone Siri doesn't want you to get an abortion

[Katiebug]

It's pretty silly to suggest that a corporation like Apple would program Siri with a pro-life bent. As others have said, I'm guessing that the search algorithm probably directs certain people to CPCs because of how they structure their names. Abortion clinics don't usually have "abortion clinic" in their names. Has anyone asked it where the nearest Planned Parenthood is? My iPhone 4 doesn't have Siri so I can't experiment for myself but I wonder how much of this is in the user's location and how the question is asked.

I read that blog and I think that people are reading way too much into what a glorified search engine is telling them, as if a rape victim with an expensive iPhone is going to rely 100% on Siri for advice on what to do. It's an absurd argument. The voice recognition capability is awesome but it's a first-gen app and it has limitations. I know one person IRL with a 4s, and he's of the opinion that Siri is for fun more than anything else.

[Alecto]

Siri is great for some things, and not so great for others. I love using it to send text messages, setting alarms and asking dumb questions - but to be frank, that is about all I can do with it.

[Jeff]

I wouldn't discount this being intentional. The iOS and Mac App Stores don't have pornography, principally because of Steve Jobs' personal moral conviction against it. Perhaps someone at Apple had a moral conviction about abortion, at least casual abortion.

[Alecto]

I wouldn't discount this being intentional. The iOS and Mac App Stores don't have pornography, principally because of Steve Jobs' personal moral conviction against it. Perhaps someone at Apple had a moral conviction about abortion, at least casual abortion.

The fallacy here is Apple is a corporate contributor to Planned Parenthood.

[Austin]

I think this siri thing takes the technology to a new level for the average user, and I would be the first to admit I am just uncomfortable with that, and that is a visceral thing, not a logical thing. Perhaps a bit generational, as well. Hell, I just recently got a fb, and also just got a new phone and bought the only phone in the AT&T store that still had a full qwerty keyboard but NOT touchscreen (hate touchscreen - my iPod experience has never been the same since touchscreen - and not in a good way).

I guess there's a limit to how connected I really want to be, but I realize that's just me.

[AnnieC 305]

Not just us.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/01/tech/mobi ... ?hpt=hp_t2

[Constance Vigilance]

Seems like the usual story. Not necessarily bad intentions, but too many dude programmers and no one thought about the wimmenz (you know, more than half of the human race).

Siri can find you Viagara and responds to "I want a blowjob" with escorts near to you, but doesn't understand contraception, abortion, or any references to female oral sex.

Males as default, IBTP.

(This post is a little overblown but has good examples. http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2 ... isogynist/)

[doggie]

the reason siri responds to blow jobs and such is because the programmers knew people would ask siri just to see the response. I doubt too many woman are going to ask for an abortion as a joke. wording things right is critical to get siri to work well. even then it is not perfect it is still in beta.

[doggie]

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/11/30/debunked ... s-in-siri/

Update: The New York Times has a response. Natalie Kerris, a spokeswoman for Apple, told them: "These are not intentional omissions meant to offend anyone. It simply means that as we bring Siri from beta to a final product, we find places where we can do better, and we will in the coming weeks."

Think Progress, Slate, and a whole lot of other outlets are piling it on thick and claiming that Siri's search parameters have a "pro-life" bias because the service has difficulty locating abortion clinics or birth control services in many areas. "Siri's unhelpful and sometimes misleading answers to pressing health questions stand in stark contrast to her prompt and accurate responses to inquiries about nearby escort services," says Think Progress, while Slate goes even farther off the deep end and says, "many around the Web [are] wondering if Siri is pro-life and whether Apple is attempting to impose its morals upon the rest of us."

This is a textbook example of sensationalistic media making something from absolutely nothing. If Siri's search parameters function the same way as other services (and I'm almost certain they do), it's likely that in addition to the business name itself, a business will have a cluster of tagged metadata associated with it. Siri's association with Yelp in the U.S. makes this sort of tagging extremely easy for restaurants and other retail services -- searching for something as simple as "hamburgers" or "Target" will return dozens of results in major cities.

For other services -- birth control and abortion clinics being two examples -- Siri apparently relies on a much less extensive database than Yelp, with far less comprehensive tagging. All that Think Progress and Slate's "research" shows is that Apple isn't relying upon Google's database for such searches, either; a Google Maps search for "abortion clinic in Washington, D.C." turns up 10 results in the Maps app, while Siri returns only two (apparently invalid) results.

If you're the type to leap to your keyboard and pound out a linkbaiting headline before warming up your logic circuits first, then sure, this might look like Apple once again being the "evil Big Brother" that the media's been trying to paint it as for years, this time passive-aggressively shoving a pro-life stance on people searching for women's health services.

If you instead insert a couple minutes of logical thought between your fingers and the keyboard, it looks more like Apple's tagging services for Siri are incomplete when it has to source its searches from sources other than Yelp -- which is exactly what you'd expect from a BETA service that's been in widespread public use for less than two months as of this writing.

At any rate, the central premise of this handwringing claim that Siri is "pro-life" is easy enough to debunk. Searches for "abortion clinic" or "birth control clinic" return few if any results in most areas, but I found results for "abortion clinic" in Denver, Milwaukee, New York City, and several other cities across the US.

A Siri search for "Planned Parenthood" almost always returns results no matter where you search in the States -- because that search is powered by Yelp rather than whatever comparatively limited database Siri is using for more specific searches like "abortion clinic" or "birth control." If Siri is really supposed to be "pro-life" and "imposing morals" on its users, then searches for the politically charged Planned Parenthood clinics would also turn up no results, wouldn't they?

Why searches for "abortion clinic" or "birth control" aren't also Yelp-powered is easy enough to discern; searching for "abortion clinic" in Washington, D.C. on yelp.com returns an array of ridiculous results such as "New York New York Salon" (the top result), McDonald's (not kidding), Ebenezers Coffeehouse, and Georgetown University Law Center. That's the downside of a crowdsourced search service.

"Why not just source results from Google Maps?" you might ask. That's easy enough to answer: it's probably because Siri is designed to lessen Apple's dependence on its biggest competitor for search services. Does that do users any sort of disservice, especially to the extent that Think Progress and Slate claim? Not particularly, since either the Google-powered Maps app or a Google search within Safari are at most one or two taps away.

Going by the hilariously flawed logic in Think Progress and Slate's reporting, I could just as easily say that Apple has a jingoistic pro-American bias because Siri's business and navigational searches only work in the U.S. "OH NOES, Siri can't find places in New Zealand, that must mean Apple hates Kiwis! Quickly Robin, to the Boycottmobile!"

About an hour or so after I finished writing the above diatribe against the massive overreaction to this non-event, Apple confirmed to the New York Times that Siri's responses to queries for abortion clinics were a glitch. "These are not intentional omissions meant to offend anyone," an Apple spokesperson confirmed to the Times. "It simply means that as we bring Siri from beta to a final product, we find places where we can do better, and we will in the coming weeks."

Critical thinking, ladies and gentlemen. It's not difficult.

Note: Due to the inevitable storm in a teacup that results anytime anyone mentions the A-word, comments on this post will be heavily moderated. We will not approve comments from either side of the endless debate.

[Jeff]

The fallacy here is Apple is a corporate contributor to Planned Parenthood.

Last I checked, Apple isn't a corporate contributor to anything, excepting their newly started employee gift matching program. Steve Jobs also didn't believe in publicly identifiable gifts to charity. Someone may have picked Planned Parenthood since that started...Apple is one of many companies that will match gifts by employees to any 501©3 -- "religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, to foster national or international amateur sports competition, to promote the arts, or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals" per Wikipedia. So an employee -- anyone from Tim Cook down to the night security guard at a store -- could cause the company to contribute to Planned Parenthood, but also even to IBLP.

[Maul the Koala]

If you're the type to leap to your keyboard and pound out a linkbaiting headline before warming up your logic circuits first, then sure, this might look like Apple once again being the "evil Big Brother" that the media's been trying to paint it as for years, this time passive-aggressively shoving a pro-life stance on people searching for women's health services.

If you instead insert a couple minutes of logical thought between your fingers and the keyboard, it looks more like Apple's tagging services for Siri are incomplete when it has to source its searches from sources other than Yelp -- which is exactly what you'd expect from a BETA service that's been in widespread public use for less than two months as of this writing.

I probably could've phrased the title better. It was one of the captions someone used with this on Facebook. I apologize for that.

I think this does show that a lot of people assume that technology is perfect and should be able to do x, y and z right off the bat. It's been educational for me because something like this doesn't come up in every day conversation about how they program things and I imagine for a few other people too. There are quite a few people who use the technology and don't know what's behind it. I do think the uproar would've been as big if it was a Blackberry or Android platform though. I don't think it mattered whatsoever what the platform was.