INQUISITR.COM / Entertainment

Australia: Siri Helps Save Baby’s Life While Mother Performs CPR

By Anne Sewell
Published on: 22:33 PST, Jun 9, 2016

An Australian mother is immensely grateful to Siri after the voice-activated iPhone assistant helped to save her baby when one-year-old Giana stopped breathing.

Siri has proved popular since the introduction of the voice-activated app on iPhone. All that is necessary to get Siri’s help is to give the clear vocal command, “Hey Siri.” In the latest case, Siri became invaluable as Stacey Gleeson of Cairns, Queensland, asked for her help in an emergency.

Reportedly Gleeson discovered baby Giana was not breathing and immediately went into action, performing CPR on her daughter and dropping her iPhone 6S onto the floor. In a report by 7 News, as the terrified mother continued performing the CPR, Gleeson shouted at the iPhone, “Hey Siri, call the ambulance.”

Giana had reportedly been struggling with a respiratory illness and chest infection, causing the baby to stop breathing. As Gleeson continued performing CPR on Giana, she talked to emergency services hands-free on her iPhone.

Reportedly by the time the ambulance arrived, Giana was breathing again, but doctors told the relieved mother that every second mattered. Reportedly since then, Giana has made a full recovery.

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According to Gleeson, she has often “played around with Siri” before. Reportedly her husband, Nic, is often away from home for his work in the Navy, so she often puts him on speakerphone using Siri’s help while she puts the children to bed. This keeps her hands free while Nic chats with Giana and her big sister, Sophie.

Now Gleeson particularly appreciates the technology, which saved her the trouble of having to physically dial emergency services, saying it is a “godsend.”

Reportedly the incident with Siri happened back in March 2016, but only came to light when Gleeson wrote a thank you note to Apple, while also reaching out to media.

Gleeson told the BBC, “As cheesy as it sounds I wanted to say thank you. I’ve only had the phone since the start of the year. I thought Siri was a fun feature. Now I have that feature turned on all the time and it will never be turned off again.”

Giana’s father, Nic Gleeson, stressed, “Everybody, everybody should be aware of the abilities of their phone.”

While not available on older phones, Siri is installed on all the latest editions of iPhones and iPads, as well as variations of the Apple Watch, and can be activated by saying, “Hey Siri.”

The app is also handy for performing other tasks, including opening music, giving timely reminders, sending text messages and making phone calls, all on demand. In this case it could have been asked, “Hey Siri, how do you save a life?”

As reported on the Inquisitr, a petition was recently launched condemning the so-called “white privilege” of the voice-activated app.

Calling the app “racist,” the petition was posted on Change.org, with the mission statement that by using a white assistant with a white accent, “Apple is proving how white privilege rules the tech industry. Apple needs to diversify their products. Siri should be replaced by an African American or Hispanic assistant.”

No doubt anyone like the Gleeson family, who have been helped by Siri, will be bewildered by such a statement.

[Photo by Hadrian / Shutterstock.com]

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