Apple official statement: Siri?s lack of abortion info isn?t intentional (Yahoo! News)

Omission of clinics doesn't indicate an anti-abortion stance, says Apple

Siri, the iPhone 4S's new voice assistant, can be?incredibly helpful and?incredibly silly, but one of the things it can't do is causing an uproar among abortion and women's rights activists around the country. The accusations have been flying around the internet for the past few days, as people point out that Siri will help you find a hooker or the closest bar, but asking it to find an abortion clinic or birth control will give you a big fat zero. Is Siri pro-life, people asked?

Not surprisingly, Apple has now?steadfastly denied any claim that Siri has any opinion on the subject. The voice assistant, Apple spokesperson Natalie Kerris points out, is still in beta release, which means that it still has many bugs to be worked out. "These are not intentional omissions meant to offend anyone. It simply means that as we bring Siri from beta to a final product, we find places where we can do better, and we will in the coming weeks," she said.

As?TUAW reporter Chris Rawson notes, one possible reason for the lack of responses is that Siri gets a lot of her business information from Yelp, rather than relying on competitor Google. A quick Google search for abortion clinics will yield several possibilities, depending on where you're searching, but they aren't the sort of businesses that tend to get reviewed on Yelp very often. A more targeted query ? requesting the location of the nearest?Planned Parenthood, for example ??tends to bring up results consistently through both Siri and Google.

Abortion is a touchy subject no matter how you look at it, so it's not surprising that Apple felt the need to respond to the accusations. The company was very careful not to hint at a stance for or against it; they simply pointed out that Siri is still a work in progress, and hopefully people won't overreact too much to issues which were coincidental at best.

(Source)

This article was written by Katherine Gray and originally appeared on Tecca

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Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/techblog/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_technews/20111201/tc_yblog_technews/apple-official-statement-siris-lack-of-abortion-info-isnt-intentional

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