Siri knows a lot of stuff: the number of teaspoons in a tablespoon, the capital of North Dakota, the average cost of gas. But Siri does not know—or at least won’t tell you—the best way to commit whatever crime you are in the process of committing. You can see why Apple might not want to be in the business of offering tailored advice for violent acts.
But Floridian Pedro Bravo—who is currently on trial for murdering his roommate and burying the body in the woods—allegedly told Siri “I need to hide my roommate,” according to WPXI News.
As Gizmodo points out, back in 2012 when the murder happened, if you told Siri that you needed to hide a body, it would respond jokingly with location options like swamps and metal foundries. But Apple has tamed Siri’s answer (see images above), perhaps because of incidents like this.
On Tuesday, prosecutors presented the Siri query as evidence, along with other phone-tracking data from the night of the murder, that shows that the flashlight function of Bravo’s phone was turned on nine times for more than 48 minutes around the time of the murder. (Yes, apparently the flashlight app Bravo was using kept records of when the flashlight was on. Good to know.) And when investigators tracked the phone’s movements from that night, its locations didn’t match the places Bravo said he had been.
People always say that there’s no such thing as a dumb question, but there definitely is.
