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Trump's order to rename AI "super intelligence" coincides with surge in .si domain registrations

After President Trump ordered US agencies to say "SI" or "super intelligence" instead of AI, registrations of Slovenia's .si domains jumped. The two outlets give different figures, and the registry is cautious about the cause.

2 outlets · 0L · 2C · 0R First reported Account updated
Image: BBC News
Image: Computerworld

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The story, neutrally told

Registrations of Slovenian .si internet domain names have risen sharply since President Donald Trump pushed to rename artificial intelligence (AI) as "super intelligence", or SI, which are also the initials of Slovenia's country code. Register.si spokesperson Klara Herman told the BBC that 44,000 .si addresses were registered in September, against fewer than 2,000 in August, an increase of more than 2,100%, and that 11,000 were registered on 30 September alone. Herman called the scale of activity in late September "unprecedented" compared with the previous 12 months, but said she was "cautious" about attributing the whole increase to Trump's comments.

Computerworld gave different figures: it reported 9,780 new .si registrations in the 24 hours after Trump's executive order, against 3,515 in the whole preceding month, and said registrations ran at 2,726 a month and 110 a day around the same time last year. Computerworld said registrars typically charged about $10 for a .si domain, while names in Anguilla's .ai domain currently fetch $90. Trump called for the technology to be renamed in his 11 September speech to the UN General Assembly in New York, saying "The use of the word artificial makes it sound fake."

On the Tuesday before the BBC's report, he hosted a meeting of technology executives and signed an executive order telling US departments and agencies to use "SI" and "Super Intelligence" and to stop acknowledging the term AI in official correspondence, websites and reports. The BBC said one possible explanation for the registrations is cyber-squatting, where people speculatively register names to resell them later at a profit; it cited the 1997 purchase of men.com for $15,000, which sold for $1.32 million seven years later. Online, people mocked images of the order's signatures after "United States" was found to be misspelt under Trump's signature, the BBC reported. Computerworld added that conspiracy theorists were wondering about a link to First Lady Melania Trump's Slovenian origins, a claim it presented without evidence.

Every sentence links to the reporting it rests on.

Left0 outlets

No left outlet in our sources has covered this story yet.

Centre2 outlets

Framing
Both outlets treat it as a light technology story: the president's AI rebrand and a spike in .si domain registrations. The BBC leads with the registry's "unprecedented" description and adds caveats; Computerworld leads with the order having "supercharged" registrations.
Emphasis
BBC: registry figures, the spokesperson's caution, cyber-squatting and the order's misspelt signature. Computerworld: 24-hour registration figures, domain prices and a Melania Trump conspiracy aside.
Leaves out or plays down
Neither reconciles its figures with the other's. Computerworld does not note the registry's caution about the cause; the BBC gives no domain prices.
Charged language
“unprecedented”“supercharges”“flurry of activity”“Conspiracy theorists”
For example
“Register.si spokesperson Klara Herman said 44,000 web addresses” — BBC News
“has already caused a flurry of activity for one internet domain registry” — Computerworld

Right0 outlets

No right outlet in our sources has covered this story yet.