Siri decided to offer its own take on the weather to BBC meteorologist Tomasz Schafernaker while he was on the air. Voicebot reports the voice assistant contradicted Schafernaker while he was live on the air in a perfectly timed reminder of the quirks of voice and AI technology.
Schafernaker was wearing an Apple Watch while discussing the weather, specifically the snowstorm in Minneapolis. In the middle of his report, Siri loudly proclaimed that snow was not in fact inbound. Schafernaker attempted to gloss over the disagreement with his voice assistant, but his co-host found the moment far too funny to not highlight for a minute or two, saying that he thought there was snow in the forecast after Siri’s comment.
When you're live on air and your watch contradicts your forecast....😆— BBC Weather (@bbcweather) November 29, 2019
🔊Sound on👇 pic.twitter.com/sYwY6iLTf4
Afterward, Schafernaker took to Twitter to make the point that Siri had activated and spoken up without him deliberately awakening the voice assistant with the deliberate use of the ‘Hey Siri’ wake word. While the awakening was accidental, it likely didn’t happen for no reason. Either someone in the studio may have said ‘Hey Siri’ or something similar at just the right moment or the gesture Schafernaker made when he raised his wrist to point at the screen may have activated Siri. The sleeve of his shirt may even have pressed the button on the Apple Watch long enough to awaken the voice assistant.
According to VoiceBot, a 2018 survey found that 28.5 percent of smart speaker users have noticed false wake-ups at least once a day, and 43.7 percent at least once per month. Normally, this just requires telling the voice assistant to stop listening, but it can be annoying even if it isn’t on live television.
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