A 12-year-old boy was given a shock when a new iPhone 4S in Tesco told him to ‘shut the f*** up, you ugly t***’, after the handset had been tampered with by pranksters.

The latest generation of iPhones come equipped with an intelligent software assistant known as Siri that is able to answer a range of questions based on user voice commands.

iPhone 4S’ Siri making a less explicit response (Pic: Apple)

But one prospective customer was given a rather rude response to a simple question while testing out the new Apple product in Tesco.

Charlie Le Quesne, 12, asked Siri: ‘How many people are there in the world?’ to which he received the response: ‘Shut the f*** up, you ugly t***.’




Staff at the branch of Tesco in Coventry apologised for the product’s abusive message and said that pranksters had tampered with the phone’s set-up instructions.

The child’s angry mum Kim said: ‘The phone was a demo version and was low enough on the shelf for Charlie to have a go with it. He asked it a simple question and we couldn’t believe the filth it came out with.

‘I thought I must be hearing things. So we asked again and the same four-letter stuff blared out.

‘I asked for the manager and after staff heard it they agreed to unplug it.’

A spokesperson for Tesco added: ‘We have launched an investigation. The handset will be going back to Apple for diagnostic tests.’

Apple were recently forced to deny that the virtual assistant is anti-abortion , after Siri would not tell users the location of local clinics.