Siri Believed Smash-Hit ‘Despacito’ Was Bulgaria’s National Anthem
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Thankfully for the country of Bulgaria, Siri apparently no longer thinks its national anthem is “Despacito.”
Before today, if you asked Siri what the European country’s national anthem was, the digital assistant would respond with “the national anthem of Bulgaria is Despacito.”
In fact, the country’s anthem is not the chart-topping single by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, which utterly dominated the airwaves over the summer.
The error was first discovered by Reddit user wandreylust, who shared the discovery yesterday, according to CNET.
Of course, the amusing flaw quickly gained a lot of media attention. But it’s currently unknown how long Siri has been giving the flawed answer before the glitch was unearthed.
Apple has apparently realized and fixed the issue sometime between yesterday and today, as Siri now gives the correct answer: “Mila Rodino,” which roughly translates to “Dear Motherland.” The song, first composed in 1885, has been Bulgaria’s anthem since 1964. And for the record, it sounds nothing like Despacito.
As for why Siri consistently gave the wrong answer, that’s currently up in the air. Some outlets have theorized that it was a leftover glitch from Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which has always been used to feed Siri’s results until Apple replaced it with Google’s search engine last week. The same issue reportedly didn’t affect Google Assistant.
Siri also sometimes surfaces results from Wikipedia, which is an open-source platform and is vulnerable to vandalism. Presumably, someone could have edited the Wikipedia page for Despacito or Bulgaria. Even if that was fixed shortly after, it could have still affected Siri’s answer.
Of course, it could also be due to the track’s sheer popularity. The Puerto Rican reggaeton hit became the most watched video on YouTube back in August — a position it still holds with just under 4 billion views. The remixed version featuring Justin Bieber, which became popular in the U.S., only has about 545 million views on YouTube. It also currently holds the record as the most streamed song of all time.
