APPLE RECENTLY ADDED an Irish accent feature for Siri. It sounds a like a mix of a Fair City character and someone who has never met an Irish person in real life.
Despite the fact that Siri can now speak to us in a Hollywood style Oirish accent, she still can’t quite understand us. For example:
Youtubers Andy Wood and Matt Kirshen have been checking out how Siri and other Artificial Intelligence systems like Google Home and Amazon Echo are responding to accents.
The Irish guy that they got to test AI responses to his accent really did not disappoint in his efforts to ham up his accent. For the first challenge he was asked to “Add Worchestire Sauce to my shopping list”.
He begins with a heavy Dublin accent and talks to Siri as if she were sitting across from him in a pub. “Here, SIRRI DO US A FAVOUR AND ADD WUSHTISHER SAUCE TO ME SHOPPIN’ LIST”. Surprised by the fact that Siri managed to understand him, he tells Siri, “You’re bleedin’ great.” It sounds like Roddy Doyle himself wrote this interaction.
But he was not satisfied. He then wanted to scream it again, in what I can only identify as something vaguely resembling a badly injured Kerry man after 13 pints. There wasn’t a bother on Siri trying to decipher it though.
The second challenge was to ask Siri when Benedict Cumberbatch was born
Honestly, I wouldn’t blame Siri for not being prepared to understand this question, because it seems highly unlikely to me that any man with such a thick country accent is going to be curious about Benedict Cumberbatch’s age.
Once again, the Irish guy gives such a strong generic country accent that he looks like he’s about to burst a blood vessel. Siri, once again is well able for him.
Next up, he asks Siri which country Ouagadougou is the capital of.
“Waga dew gew is the capital of which cunchry?” in an accent very reminiscent of Love/Hate. Siri was not prepared for that one, and it’s one of the only ones he failed.
Finally, for challenge 4, they ask “Which writer wrote Westworld?” This one didn’t go well for the other participants, but once again, Siri was ready for this guy who barking ”WHICH WROITER WROTE WEST WURLD?”. Google Home didn’t fare as well against his Love/Hate accent, while Amazon’s Alexa turned itself off instead of even trying.
Overall, Siri performed a lot better than the average Irish iPhone user would expect. Skip to (00:47) if you want to get straight to the Irish accents.
