Apple’s voice assistant keeps “humbly” recommending the company’s own watch
When you ask Siri, the voice assistant that Apple loads onto the iPhone, to find a nearby watch, it will often tout the new smart timepiece made by Apple.
If a user asks Siri for “Breitling watches near me,” it sometimes answers: “May I humbly recommend the Apple Watch…it’s all about quality time, that one!”
Another response, to a query for “watches near me”: “I’m a fan of Apple Watch myself. And not just because I’m in it.” (That probably helps, though.)
Siri doesn’t bring up the message (pictured, right) every time it was asked for a watch, but JCK received the thinly disgused sales pitch three or four times.
Sean Dunn, co-owner of J.R. Dunn Jewelers in Lighthouse Point, Fla., first spotted the message when one of his employees was testing the store’s search optimization.
“We tried every single watch brand,” he says. “We were blown away.”
At first he was amused, but he also feels a bit unsettled.
“I found it very odd,” he says. “This is someone you are supposed to ask for advice. It is kind of crossing the line a bit. If you are a competitor in the same price range as Apple, I don’t know how much you are loving it.
“It is very powerful,” he continues. “How do you compete against Siri?”
An Apple spokesperson did not return a request for comment.
(Photo, top, courtesy of J.R. Dunn Jewelers)
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