Did Apple’s iPhone Siri tell boy to STFU?

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For all the kind and helpful advice that Apple’s Siri personal assistant gives out, don’t ever catch it on a bad day, or it’ll tell you off in ways your mother would not approve.

If a report from The Sun is to be believed, a demo unit for the iPhone 4S caught fire for telling 12-year-old Charle Le Quesne to “Shut the f— up, you ugly t—.”

Charlie reportedly asked Siri “How many people are there in the world?” and that was the answer he got back. Together with his mother and the manager, they asked the demo iPhone 4S the same question and got the same answer back yet again. Needless to say, the demo unit was unplugged and sent back to Apple for “diagnostic tests.”

The errors seems to have stemmed from Siri thinking that the questioner’s name was “Shut the f— up, you ugly t—.”

All this happened at a U.K. Tesco supermarket. It’s worth noting that on U.K. iPhones, Siri’s default voice is that of a male and not female like it is in the U.S. So you’ll have to picture Siri cursing the poor boy out with a male British accent. I bet it sounds even funnier that way.

The Sun, via TiPb, via NBC