Don't Ask Siri to Call 112 Unless There's an Emergency
Updated Dec. 7 2023, 12:53 p.m. ET
The Gist:
- 112 is an emergency number in Europe.
- In the U.S., calling 112 will get Siri to call 911 on your behalf (though apparently not all cell carriers recognize 112 as an emergency number).
Voice assistants on smartphones are becoming smarter and smarter as the years go by. You can practically handle all of your phone tasks with voice automation software on Android, and the more you actively speak to your phone and have it recognize your speech patterns, the better its software gets at recognizing what you're saying. Plus, it's also fun to just mess around with a robot if you're bored, but whatever you do, don't tell Siri "112." You probably won't like what happens.
So, what happens when you tell Siri 112?
If you're from Europe, then you know that "112" is the shorthand phone number to dial emergency services. So even if you're stateside and you're out and about with your iPhone, dialing 112 in a sticky situation that requires help on the double will get Siri to call 911 on your behalf (though it's important to note that not all cell carriers in the U.S. recognize 112 as an emergency number). It's also a great secret way to call the cops if you're in a bind without alerting others to the fact that you're asking for help.
This goes without saying, but don't tell Siri to dial 112 just for the heck of it.
If you don't know the boy who cried wolf story, now's a good time to catch up on it and learn the vital lesson: You shouldn't be calling 911 for a situation that isn't an emergency, so dialing 112 via Siri just for the heck of it is a prime way to ensure that you're getting in a ton of trouble.
The penalties for "prank" calling 911 when there really isn't an emergency are extremely severe and vary depending on the nature of your call. Let's say you dialed up emergency services for a situation that didn't necessitate the need for police to report to the scene. If you're found guilty of abusing the system, you could spend up to a year in county jail and get fined up to $1,000. But that's not all.
If you falsely report or exaggerate great bodily harm, injury, or death, then that fine can go all the way up to $10,000 and three years in a county jail. So you definitely want to think twice before dialing those emergency services.
It's important to note that other countries' emergency services numbers will also work in Siri: 108 (India) and 119 (South Korea) will also trigger 911, so keep that in mind.
Siri previously made headlines when folks asked it to "show me a picture of an idiot."
Voice assistants are plugged into the web for populating results, and they will enlist the help of search engines to do so. It's no secret that the most widely used search engine in the world is Google. So Siri, along with Google Assistant (duh) and Samsung's "annoying" Bixby, will usually pull results from Google in order to get content to their users.
In 2020, folks began talking about what happened when you asked Siri to show you a picture of an idiot. At the time, Siri showed a picture of Donald Trump.
Before you go and start labeling this as some type of anti-Trump, uber-liberal conspiracy to demean the GOP, just know that Donald Trump showed up because people ardently worked to tag a bunch of pictures of the president as an idiot, so that's most likely the reason why Siri showed that photo.
