“Siri, Are You Homophobic?” This Rainbow Family Is Taking None Of Apple’s Fence-Sitting
Since Apple launched their virtual assistant Siri in 2011, users have been chatting to the bot hoping to get lifelike human responses. A rainbow family posted a video recently where their son asked Siri about it’s thought on gay marriage – he didn’t like the answer.
Excuse me ma’am… During Pride Month no less!
The page that posted the adorable TikTok is called @rainbowdads and belongs to two gay fathers who post LGBTQIA+ family content with their son Forge. The family posts about celebrating both Father’s Day and Papa’s Day and about raising their child in a queer-friendly household.
When one of the dads asked Siri whether she believed in gay marriage, the virtual assistant responded saying, “I don’t have an answer for that. Is theres something else i can help you with?” Forge did not let that slide and proceeds to say, “Siri’s homophobic! Siri, are you homophobic?” Of course, the answer given for that question was “no”. But the young boy didn’t appreciate the centrism of Siri’s programming which I feel we can all appreciate.
Apple is sweating!
It wouldn’t be the first time that Siri has come under fire for reported homophobia. In 2015, a video showed the Russian language version of Siri had been programmed to understand the word “gay” as profanity, reports The Guardian. A man asked about gay bars in his area, Siri’s thoughts on gay marriage and how to register a gay marriage. Siri’s answers to these questions were, “I would have turned red if I could”, “you are so rude!” and “I will pretend I haven’t heard”.
It’s important to note that virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant have pages of complex coding to enable them to make relevant responses. It was an active choice by Apple to have Siri’s response about gay marriage be evasive which is reflective of a neutral stance.
