Apple’s Siri Corrects “Bruce Jenner” To “Caitlyn”

Siri may say a lot of hilarious things, but she also knows what's what. Her coolest new piece of knowledge is timely and laudable: She'll automatically correct queries about "Bruce Jenner" to her gender-appropriate identity, "Caitlyn Jenner." You go, Siri. When you ask Siri things like, “What is Bruce Jenner’s real name?” or "How old is Bruce Jenner?" or “How tall is Bruce Jenner?” Siri will pull results that tell you (respectively), "Caitlyn Jenner," "Caitlyn Jenner is 65," and "Caitlyn Jenner is six feet, two inches." Apple and its CEO, Tim Cook, are vocal supporters of LGBTQ rights, and the company has transgender-inclusive health benefits policies. But these corrections of misgendering are actually thanks to the data engines that give Siri her utility: Wolfram Alpha and Wikipedia. Wolfram Alpha is a vast pool of data. Siri uses it when you ask questions about nature facts, different time zones, calorie information for foods, and information about celebrities — like their heights and weights. For other general queries (like "Who is Bruce Jenner?" and "How old is Bruce Jenner?"), Siri pulls answers from Wikipedia, whose article on Bruce Jenner no longer exists and now redirects to Caitlyn Jenner. Siri is not alone in fixing Caitlyn-related misgendering. There's also a handy Twitter bot, @she_not_he, that sends out corrections on the 140-character social network. The bot looks for tweets that contain “Jenner” and “he,” filters out words and names that would throw a false positive (like male Jenners "Brody" or "Brandon"), and then tweets the offender a correction. It's too bad this bot doesn't exist in the real world, too.