Back to Mobile View

Skip to Content

Siri tips: Don't transform your coworker into your spouse

by Erica Sadun Nov 3rd 2011 at 7:00AM

If you don't want to accidentally marry your colleague, make sure you watch your phrasing when talking to Siri.

Following a relationship with a contact without using some kind of helper word like "that" or "about" may confuse your voice assistant, as shown in the screenshot here.

Instead of saying "Tell my wife, Erica Sadun is coming for dinner," insert "that." Saying "Tell my wife that..." followed by your statement helps separate the relationship from the contact that follows.

Siri does such a good job interpreting speech that sometimes it's hard to remember she's just a bunch of algorithms in a North Carolina data center. Be sensitive to interpretation quirks, and try to avoid them where possible.



View Tags

Related Stories

Categories

iPhone

If you don't want to accidentally marry your colleague, make sure you watch your phrasing when talking to Siri. Following a...
 

Add a Comment

Sign in »
*0 / 3000 Character Maximum Comment Moderation Enabled. Your comment will appear after it is cleared by an editor.

22 Comments

Filter by:
50's on 5

Who knows, Erica might make a wonderful wife.

November 03 2011 at 7:23 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jared

It's hard for SIRI to understand improper grammar? Is this a bad thing? Or have we seriously declined so low in our English speaking ability that this would bother us? Either way, another avenue that SIRI is helping us in our daily lives is--- using proper English!!! :)

November 03 2011 at 1:54 PM Report abuse +2 rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Jared's comment
oneMadRssn

is it improper grammer?

"Tell my wife: Erica Sadun is coming for dinner." Sure, given that there is audible way to indicate "colon", in conversation it would be *better* to inset the word "that". Having a better way doesn't make this way "wrong".

In any case, this is a classic example of "speech to text" errors in general.

November 03 2011 at 5:38 PM Report abuse -1 rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to oneMadRssn's comment
oneMadRssn

*grammar

November 03 2011 at 5:38 PM Report abuse rate up rate down
Terrell Chambers

Actually, to be quite technical, even your example is improper grammar; you are not supposed to use a colon in such a manner. "Tell my wife the following: Erica Sadun is coming for dinner." is the proper way to use a colon in this context.

November 03 2011 at 11:11 PM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down
Andrew Slifer

Anyone with a room mate situation try that out? Can I title all three of my room mates, as "roomies" and then whenever necessary ask Siri to send a message to all the room mates at the same time?

November 03 2011 at 1:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mike

Hey all... just in case Siri makes a mistake.. or you want to add more relations including coworkers (assistants) just go to YOUR main contact that Siri knows is you and edit. All the relations are stored there that you put in or Siri adds. You can add more or fix errors. However, do not try to do other and custom as Siri only knows the words in the predefined contact fields. Hope this helps someone!

November 03 2011 at 12:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Mike's comment
adriantong@gmail.com

some custom fields work, for example Siri understands "cousin" when you add it as a custom field for a name.

November 03 2011 at 2:27 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Sfwrtr

@Erica,

Was Siri told previously on that phone that it's owner had a wife?

I can see that the online fascination with Siri is going to help Apple R&D.
The obvious fix is context. Wife as a tag changes rarely, so if wife has already been defined, the lack of that or about is no longer ambiguous.

If you never said you had a wife, even a human would say, "Hey wait, you have a wife?"

November 03 2011 at 12:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Peter Brülls

Which brings up another question; Is it possible to tell Siri that one is not married?

November 03 2011 at 11:26 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Peter Brülls's comment
Nunyabinez

Siri uses your relationship statuses in your contact info. There is not way to identify that you don't have something, only that nothing is defined. So, if you say "send a text to my wife" siri will ask you to identify which of your contacts should be assigned as spouse in your contact info. I'm afraid there's no way to give yourself a status of unmarried.

November 03 2011 at 3:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
shippster

Can you help me with how Siri is confusing my wife's relationship?
My name is Dave and my wife's is Rachel. I told Siri my wife is Rachel. I ask Siri who my wife is and it pulls up the right contact, but when I tell her to send my wife a message ishe says" Sorry, there's no wife number for Dave."
If I manually put a wife number in for me, then it annoyingly says "Sendind Dave a message" since mine is the name of the contact it is drawing the wife info from -- why isn't it pulling from her contact? How can I fix this?

November 03 2011 at 11:03 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to shippster's comment
Nunyabinez

You need to add the phone number to Rachel's info. In your info all you should have is a relationship, which is a link to another contact.

Look at your contact info. Under your addressees there should be a list of the relationships you have defined. You can add relationships by clicking in the last item in that block. Don't worry about what it says (e.g. if it says "father") because you change it later. Then you select a contact. Then click on the label (father, mother, etc.) and you get a list of all the relationships that are possible. Now you just need to make sure that the information is complete in the contact that you selected and you can use the title to instruct siri (e.g. send a text to my assistant).

November 03 2011 at 3:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Nunyabinez's comment
shippster

I thought that would fix it - but it still didn't. I then realized it had her listed as Spouse, so I changes the label to wife and it still says there is no wife number listed for me. Any more ideas?

November 04 2011 at 10:54 AM Report abuse rate up rate down
oneMadRssn

Breaking news: Siri makes mistakes in understanding human language, just like every speech-to-text system ever created.

Even IBM's Watson was fed the questions in text format, not through voice.

November 03 2011 at 11:02 AM Report abuse +2 rate up rate down Reply
Soybean

Do many people omit the "that" in this situation? It sounds weird to me. Anyway, good tip for those who do.

November 03 2011 at 8:55 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Soybean's comment
William

Basically if you speak grammatically correct English, Siri will understand you better, which isn't a huge surprise.

November 03 2011 at 2:26 PM Report abuse +2 rate up rate down Reply
Alphonso Carioti

Siri is learning and getting better. I asked her yesterday, 'Is there a God?' She responded, 'There is NOW!'

November 03 2011 at 8:26 AM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Alphonso Carioti's comment
maclabop

Was this before or after you told Siri to refer to you as "God"?

November 03 2011 at 10:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.