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A freak chain of events culminated in Apple’s voice assistant Siri dispatching over a dozen police officers to storm a gym in Sydney, Australia.
Upon arrival, they heard no gunshots and there was no crime scene—only a confused personal trainer wondering what the commotion was all about.
“About 15 officers including undercovers showed up, with several ambulances parked out the front, and that’s when I started bricking myself,“ Jamie Alleyne told Australia’s news.com.au, using a term for dread.
Especially after they asked for him by name.
When the officers quizzed Alleyne as to why he had contacted emergency services, reachable in Australia by dialing either 000 or 112 rather than 911 as in the U.S., the 34 year-old was stupefied. It was only 7:45 in the morning and he was with his very first client for the day.
But a glance at his fitness wearable Apple Watch revealed that indeed a call had been made. Upon further inspection, Alleyne also came across a message left by health officials from Sydney’s state of New South Wales that ambulances had been sent to his location.
‘You have to fight us’
It then dawned on the man that it might have to do with his boxing session. The trainer had been wearing close-fitting mitts that appear to have accidentally depressed a button on the watch that wakes Siri up.
In the process of giving specific commands to his client, he was also shouting the punch combination “1-1-2” that then triggered a call to emergency services. They were subsequently treated to a series of loud noises as the punches landed, followed by “good shot”.
Since Siri automatically shares the location of the Watch’s owner in such events, the officers knew exactly where to find Alleyne and minutes later they were at the scene.
“It does cause concern the 112 feature on the watches can be triggered so easily by people wearing either boxing gloves or boxing mitts,” Alleyne reflected later.
He’ll recommend staff not to have their watches on while training in the future: “Not sure we’ll enforce a ban gym wise for customers, but I’ll definitely send something out to our customers to be careful about wearing them.”
Fortunately, everyone took the freak chain of events lightheartedly.
“I was extremely apologetic,” explained Alleyne, “As a joke one of the officers said, ‘You have to fight one of us now’.”
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