TikToker’s video shows Siri doesn’t recognise Palestine’s existence
Apple's voice assistant, Siri, was stumped when a TikTok user asked it for the time in Palestine.
Apple’s voice assistant, Siri, was stumped when a TikTok user asked it for the time in Palestine.
‘I have no idea what time it is there,’ replied Siri.
TikToker Mayanoraa, posted a video of her asking Siri the question on her TikTok @mindfultraveller with over 40k followers.
In the video, she also asked Siri for the time In Israel, to which the voice assistant replied, ‘In Jerusalem, Israel, it’s 13.20’
In a follow-up video, replying to one of the comments asking her to ‘try asking for a city in the west bank’, the TikToker faced the same issue.
Determined to expose Apple’s apparent bias against Palestinians, she asked Siri for the time in the Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Hebron.
‘Sorry, I don’t know what time it is in Ramallah,’ said Siri. The same was true for Hebron.
Ramallah currently serves as the administrative capital of the Palestinian National Authority.
‘Hey Siri, what time is it in East Jerusalem?’ was also met with the same answer.
Mayanoraa told Metro.co.uk that she noticed this issue when she was reading about the Pegasus spyware and the shadowban for Palestinians during the Sheikh Jarrah movement.
‘I’m still wondering how the algorithm works and why Siri is not recognizing Palestine’s time zone when Android phones do,’ she said.
Angry users in the comments called for boycotting Apple for siding with Israel, which has been accused of committing human rights violations and illegally occupying Palestinian land.
‘I just tried this and got the same result.’ said one TikTok user in the comments.
‘Omg, this is appalling. I just tried it with my Siri and it can’t tell me the time or weather in Palestine or East Jerusalem,’ said another user.
In May, Apple employees circulated an internal letter signed by nearly 1000 employees, calling on Tim Cook to put out a statement supporting the Palestinian people.
This came after Israel’s deadly bombing campaign in Gaza which killed roughly 227 people, including at least 63 children.
The writers, who are part of the Apple Muslim Association, specifically asked the company to recognize that ‘millions of Palestinian people currently suffer under an illegal occupation’.
‘We are frustrated and disappointed because once more, many of those in positions of power and influence … either choose to remain silent or release ineffectually neutral “both sides” statements with regards to the Palestinian situation,’ said the Members of the Apple Muslim Association who sent the note.
People in the comments tried it out on their phones and found that Android’s Bixby, Amazon’s Alexa and Huawei’s Celia were all able to answer questions about the time and weather in Palestine.
Google was able to answer but supplemented it with links to East Jerusalem.
Similarly, Siri was not able to recognise the time in other territories like Kosovo or Abkhazia. The State of Palestine has been recognized by 138 of the 193 UN members and since 2012 has had a status of a non-member observer state in the United Nations.
This is not the first time that Palestine’s erasure has been highlighted on technology. Apple and Google have previously been accused of deleting Palestine from their online maps, despite it never being labelled in the first place.
Searching for Palestine on Apple Maps and Google Maps shows an outline for the Gaza Strip and West Bank territories, but no labels for Palestine.
‘It’s unfair and justice is not connected to nationality. It seems like peace is a privilege instead of a human right. “Little” things like asking Siri what time it is shouldn’t be political in my opinion,’ said the Jordanian, Iraqi, Dutch TikToker.
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is a 100-year-old issue, with the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip reaching 54 years of conflict.
This week, the UN said that without decisive action, there was the risk of ‘deadly escalation’ in violence in the region.
Siri remains polite about the omission by apologising.
‘You are not sorry,’ said an exasperated Mayanoraa in the video.
Metro.co.uk has contacted Apple for comment and we will update this article if we receive a response.
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