To explain: Siri is the helpful system on the iPhone which responds to requests for things. You can ask it the time, where the local pizza shop is, etc.. YOu do so using your voice, and it responds with vocal feedback as well as showing you information on the phone.

Anyway, yesterday, I get a call on Skype from a client. He’s a fairly gruff American, and is easily discombobulated by some things. The phone call started with him midway through an argument with what sounded like a woman. He was shouting, she was replying, and the language got more and more heated to the extent where he was saying things like “Why don’t you just f*ck off” to which the reply eventually came “I don’t know how to f*ck off”.

The great thing is that the replies from Siri were delayed - a bit like that Two Ronnies Mastermind sketch where the answer was from a previous question. This only served to increase the rage, and somehow made the conversation I was hearing sound natural - especially as he was responding to Siri’s replies. He did (eventually) explain that it was Siri, which somehow seemed to be permanently on because as we started out conversation, Siri was still processing and responding to him.

I did initially wonder if he was having a moment of rage at someone who had seriously hacked him off. However, it was just him and the phone - and of course his volume was stopping me from hearing the Siri bleeps as it uploads and process voice data. Once I knew what was going on, I saw it for what it was - a surreal exchange between a man and his phone’s automated voice recognition system.

I am now indebted to Apple for providing me with this fine moment of comedy, as well as for proving that Siri can, just by providing an accurate repeat of the voice command, provoke what sounded like a very real conversation.

I was excited that Siri had actually passed the Turing test for a second Nothing's done it so far.