Apple Fixes 'Homophobic Siri': Russian Version Was Anti-LGBT

Alex, a Russian speaker living in London, was excited to discover that a Russian Siri existed. He was excited, that is, until the robotic voice began responding with all-too-human shades of homophobia. After Alex posted a YouTube video on Saturday demonstrating Siri's sometimes passive-aggressive, sometimes hostile answers, Apple appeared to have fixed it by Tuesday, reports Russian BBC.

"Are there gay clubs around me?" Alex asks Siri in the YouTube clip. "I would turn red if I could," Siri responds, not unlike a prudish, judgmental relative. Asked again, Siri stalls: "Oh, well."

When asked "How to register a gay marriage in the U.K." Siri, after initially ignoring the question with silence, responds, "I will pretend I haven't heard it."

After a few attempts at being subtly homophobic, Siri finally lets loose when asked, "Is gay marriage normal?" Siri responds, "So now you’re swearing obscenities and then you’re going to eat with these very hands!"

BBC Russia reported getting the same answers as Alex, but the Verge reported that its questioning of Russian Siri about gay clubs resulted in nonhomophobic responses, leading it to conclude that Apple had fixed the issue. Russia has anti-LGBT legislation and is infamously intolerant of the LGBT community. Apple claimed, nevertheless, that Russian Siri's responses “were the results of a bug that has since been fixed.”