In a quiet server-side update, Apple has given Siri the ability to respond to requests with quotes, notably to suggest that the user is being too long-winded. When asking the assistant a question — presumably one that Apple’s servers find too long or difficult to parse — Siri responds with William Strunk and Thomas Jefferson quotes alluding to brevity.
Notably, the thirty-word Strunk quote itself takes several seconds for Siri to read aloud, and in one case was delivered in the middle of dictation.
The Strunk and Jefferson quotes appear to have been added to Siri over the last week and a half, and represent a new direction for Apple’s virtual assistant.
Rather than just recognizing or failing to recognize a user’s natural speech, Siri now appears to be using quotations to change the user’s speaking patterns.
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