Although it has been there for several years, Apple's Siri (digital assistant) is still experiencing failures, many times failing to properly respond to basic commands. Earlier this month, he reportedly stood at the height of circumstances when a four-year-old boy was forced to seek help in an emergency.
The young Roman, resident of the Kenley area of Croydon, United Kingdom, found his mother on the floor on March 7. He tried to wake her up but failed. She then found her iPhone, pressed her thumb on the home button, and asked Siri's digital assistant for help.
You can hear the sound of Roman's energy below.
Roman joined the local emergency services (the UK number is 999). So the mechanism moved, and soon (within 13 minutes of receiving the call, with the site) a group of nurses were able to give Mother first aid and take her with Roman to the hospital for further testing.
Although for the most part the presence of Roman was the one that saved his mother's life, this story highlights one of the important aspects of voice assistants: accessibility.
It is not clear if the child could have called the emergency number alone, but he was lucky to find a way to call for help.
Let's say that digital assistants are increasing with the last one Alexa of Amazon, and it looks great to see companies doing more to help their users at a difficult time, regardless of their age or if their voices are recognized by connected devices.
Features such as these will need a lot of work to operate out of the box around the world, as each country uses different emergency systems and services. Let's hope the Roman story will motivate many companies to produce very simplified but also functional products so they can be used by everyone.
ΥΓ. : The title was corrected after a friend's Facebook intervention.
