Siri meets Apple’s recycling robot in new video — what could go wrong? Oh.
Siri, meet Liam. But be careful not to rub the disassembly iPhone robot the wrong way.
Apple has also put together a cute promotional ad for Earth Day that highlights both Liam and Siri meeting for the first time -- something that doesn't go quite as planned.
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The ad comes just a month after Apple unveiled a large-scale robot named Liam, a huge industrial robot with 29 freestanding robotic arms, at its iPhone SE press event. The company had secretly been working on Liam in a warehouse for years.
Not surprisingly, the reveal left a lot of people with questions. How big is this thing? How does he disassemble your ruined, returned iPhones, so they’ll all be easier to recycle?
In the spirit of Earth Day, Siri wants to fill you in. Now, when you ask Siri about Liam, she'll quip one of a dozen or so lines, such as “Liam is my new robot colleague at Apple. I’ve asked him to coffee but he’s kind of a workaholic.”
The move comes as Apple aims to draw more attention to its eco-forward efforts. In creating Liam, Apple is trying to address a growing problem for the consumer electronics industry. Electronics waste, particularly waste from batteries, is a growing hazard in developing nations, where much of this waste can ultimately wind up.
Liam is programmed to disassemble old, returned iPhones by removing components bit by bit so they’ll all be easier to recycle.
Liam is programmed to disassemble the many pieces of iPhones -- such as SIM card trays, screws, batteries and cameras -- by removing components bit by bit so they’ll all be easier to recycle. Traditional tech recycling methods involve a shredder with magnets that makes it hard to separate parts in a pure way (you’ll often get scrap materials commingled with other pieces).
Apple also recently pulled its existing iPhone return policies into one overarching program called Renew. It includes Apple's take-back initiative, where customers bring in devices to be recycled; Apple Care, which allows users to get new devices when their own is beyond repair; and the Apple trade-in program for those who want device upgrades.
For those who donate devices through its new Renew program to Apple.com/Thanks, you'll be encouraged to download a collection of green-inspired smartphone wallpapers.
BONUS: A first look at Liam, Apple's recycling robot
Samantha Murphy Kelly was the Deputy Tech Editor for Mashable, where she covered lifestyle tech and entertainment. She joined the Mashable team in 2011 and was based in New York.Samantha is regularly featured on national TV broadcasts -- including Fox, Fox Business, CNBC, the BBC and HuffPost Live -- contributes to radio segments (NPR, Wall Street Journal Radio) and has served as a panelist and moderator at conferences.Before joining Mashable, Samantha covered the tech industry as a senior writer for TechNewsDaily and wrote stories for sister publications LiveScience.com and Laptop Magazine. Her stories have been syndicated to various sites including CNN, Yahoo! News, MSNBC, ABC News, Fox News and CBS News. She also spent five years at a retail trade magazine writing about social media and technology, worked at ABC News in the Brian Ross investigative unit and got her start in journalism at CourtTV.com, where she reported on high-profile court cases. She’s a graduate of New York University with a degree in journalism.Samantha has taught English in Thailand, climbed Mt. Fuji in Japan and has a thing for pizza.
