How does Siri suggest contacts

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  • You must have noticed that when you swipe down from your iPhone menu, Siri suggests you a contact to text, call or Whatsapp.

  • You may have also noticed that the contact that Siri suggests you might be someone who you have not spoken to for a very long time.

  • Is this a bug? Or does Siri know about the two of you more than you think? Is Siri suggesting you to call your ex or your lost friend?

 

Siri, call my wife. What is your wife's name?

How does Siri suggestions work for suggesting people to Call, Whatsapp  or to open an app?

  • Apple calls it Siri’s Proactive Intelligence - where Siri tries to predict what you would want to do next, and suggests you even before you make a request. But how does it predict that you should text someone, when you have not spoken to the person for weeks?

Whatsapp Siri Suggestions Turn On/Off

  • Siri does have access to your Whatsapp. Does that mean Siri is snooping on all the conversations that you are having with your contacts? While it very well can and might actually be true, the actual reason seems much more simpler than that.

  • Siri has access to your Whatsapp data, which includes your Data and Storage Usage. Siri is very likely using this data to understand your texting pattern.

  • Let’s discuss the person Siri is suggesting you call or text. Did you text each other a lot earlier and have recently stopped talking? Siri very likely selects the contact who you have texted the most and suggests you - even when you have stopped texting each other recently.

  • This means you have to either surpass the total number of whatsapp messages you sent to this person with another person, OR, to confuse the Siri algorithm; just go to your Whatsapp Settings delete the Storage usage information.

  • Interestingly, Siri never suggests you to send a text to a Whatsapp group and only focuses on suggesting a particular set of people who you may likely want to text - Your boss, your husband and your ex-husband.

Why does the iPhone suggest who to text?

  • Siri suggests who to text in an attempt to help you tap and start texting conveniently.

  • The main notion of Siri is that it is predicting that this is exactly what you may want to do - based on your history (as per the Apple website).

How to Turn off Siri Suggestions?

 

How to turn off Siri App Suggestions on Iphone

If you wish to stop Siri from giving you suggestions to text someone on whatsapp, or stop receiving suggestions for a specific app only, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Settings > Siri & Search.

  2. Scroll down and select an app.

  3. Then tap Search, Suggestions, & Shortcuts to allow or prevent results and shortcut suggestions from showing up.

When you turn this feature off, you'll have the option to select Show App. Turn this off to prevent the app from appearing in your search results.

How to confuse siri suggestions

Siri, just like any other AI, learns based on the data provided (called training data). A way to confuse an AI is through providing false information to it. In the case of Siri, it’s AI (most likely) suggests apps and contacts to text on Whatsapp based on the time and frequency of your interaction with an app, or a contact in your chat box. So in order to confuse the Siri algorithms, you would probably need to open a different set of apps that you never use. And while you are at this mysterious journey to find closure in the goal of confusing Siri, delete those unused apps and clean up your iphone screen (OCD much).

 

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