💧 Not So Super, Apple

[Frankly, “Use ChatGPT” is the best answer Siri has offered.]
Yesterday, for reasons worth explaining only in a footnote1, I asked Siri who won Super Bowl XIII. It vomited out this hot mess:

We’ll set aside that it transcribed my spoken “thirteen” as “13”, rather than the Roman numeral “XIII” that’s used for Super Bowls. The response is the real problem, because despite being asked about Super Bowl XIII, Siri is bizarrely providing the winner of Super Bowl LII. The requested match-up of Super Bowl XIII was contested between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Dallas Cowboys,and the Philadelphia Eagles were most definitely not the winners. That would have been a hell of an upset.

I shared this with my pal John, and we had a good laugh. In the course of that conversation, I dinked around further, hitting more and more wrong answers. Eventually, I decided to be methodical. I asked my iPhone2 who won Super Bowls 1 through 60 (that’s “I” through “LX” in Super Bowl styling) and captured a screenshot of each result.3 The timestamps tell me this took just under 10 minutes. It also made my thumb hurt a little.

I then used ChatGPT to make assorted text lists, including the Roman numerals from I to LX, as well as all the actual Super Bowl winners.4 This saved my thumb, and other fingers, some amount of pain. I shoved all this into a Numbers spreadsheet for analysis.5 On the graphical front, I worked with Flying Meat’s excellent Retrobatch to process the collection of images.

So, how did Siri do? With the absolute most charitable interpretation, Siri correctly provided the winner of just 20 of the 58 Super Bowls that have been played. That’s an absolutely abysmal 34% completion percentage. If Siri were a quarterback, it would be drummed out of the NFL.

Siri did once manage to get four years in a row correct (Super Bowls IX through XII), but only if we give it credit for providing the right answer for the wrong reason. More realistically, it thrice correctly answered three in a row (Super Bowls V through VII, XXXV through XXVII, and LVII through LIX). At its worst, it got an amazing 15 in a row wrong (Super Bowls XVII through XXXII). Most amusingly, it credited the Philadelphia Eagles with an astonishing 33 Super Bowl wins they haven’t earned, to go with the 1 they have.

Below, I’ve gathered a dozen of my favorite responses, in sequential order.

Super Bowl III

The first time the AFC won the Super Bowl was also the first time Siri gave a correct answer, and it even included a nice enough image.

Super Bowl V

The second AFC Super Bowl victory was also Siri’s second right answer. This time, it featured a much worse image.

Super Bowl VIII

Look at that lovely card. Alas, it’s providing information for a Super Bowl that took place more than four decades after the one I’d asked about.

Super Bowl X

By contrast, look at that hideous wall of text about the wrong Super Bowl. This was where Siri provided the right answer for the wrong reason. Through sheer dumb luck, the winner of Super Bowl X (what I’d asked about) was also the winner of Super Bowl IX (what it’s blathering about).

Super Bowl XI

Right, and yet, still wrong! At the time, the Raiders played in Oakland. They would not move to Las Vegas for another 43 years.

Super Bowl XVI

Inexplicably, for this one lone Super Bowl, Siri offered to search the web or use ChatGPT.

Asking ChatGPT led to both a correct answer, and a useful warning to check for mistakes.

Super Bowl XXIII

This answer is nonsensical, but the mug shot-looking picture of Bill Belichick made me laugh.

Super Bowl XXX

Say, now there’s a bunch of barely related drivel. Thanks!

Super Bowl LVII

Ah, wow, a correct answer. And it’s on a fancy card and everything.

Super Bowl LVIII

Just like the Chiefs, that’s two in a row!

Super Bowl LIX

Super Bowl LIX (pronounced “licks”) hasn’t happened yet, and Siri knows it. Now we’re cooking with gas!

Super Bowl LX

Never mind.6

That’ll do it for today’s edition of “Siri Is Dreadful”. If you weren’t looking for an incredibly deep dive on Apple’s failings when it comes to providing answers about Super Bowl winners, well boy, how did you make it this far? As I did in my previous post, I will again wish you better luck tomorrow.

Footnotes:

First, my pal Amy Jane showed me a clip of Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker misspelling “Eagles” in a chant.

That led me to dig up the crack I’d heard about Terry Bradshaw (“He couldn’t spell ‘CAT’ if you spotted him the ‘C’ and the ‘A’”), which apparently originated with Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson before Super Bowl XIII. The page I landed on was part of NFL.com, the NFL’s official website. It also included a note that “[o]n the sidelines during that game, Henderson used a nasal spray bottle containing water mixed with cocaine”. Wild stuff!
Anyhow, I wasn’t sure if Bradshaw or Henderson got the better of it in that game, so I turned to Siri. That was a mistake. ↩︎

Update (February 3, 2025): Though it was slower than Siri, eventually, the universe answered my initial query.

My phone was running iOS 18.2.1 and had Apple Intelligence enabled. I also tested a sampling of these questions on both the forthcoming iOS 18.3 (with Apple Intelligence enabled) and on MacOS 14.7.2 (with plain old Siri). In all cases, they provided identical, and identically wrong, results. ↩︎

You can check my work via the a full collection of answers for Super Bowl I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV, XXXVI, XXXVII, XXXVIII, XXXIX, XL, XLI, XLII, XLIII, XLIV, XLV, XLVI, XLVII, XLVIII, XLIX, L, LI, LII, LIII, LIV, LV, LVI, LVII, LVIII, LIX, LX ↩︎

I cross-checked that list against my own knowledge, as well as both Wikipedia and ESPN. ↩︎

I invite you to download this spreadsheet in Excel and PDF formats. ↩︎

A very, very small amount of credit might be given here, as this is a description of what happened in the 1960 NFL Championship Game. ↩︎