LJUBLJANA — Registrations for Slovenian internet domain names surged more than 2,100 percent in September following U.S. President Donald Trump's push to rebrand artificial intelligence as "super intelligence," which shares the same "SI" initials as Slovenia's web suffix.
Register.si, the official national registry, reported 44,000 web addresses with the.si suffix were registered in September, compared to fewer than 2,000 in August, according to Klara Herman, a spokesperson for the registry.
On September 30 alone, 11,000 new registrations were recorded.
President Trump first called for the technology to be renamed during his address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 11. He said the term "artificial" made the technology "sound fake."
"It's not fake, it's actually amazing," Trump said. "But we have to be careful. Welcome to the new world of super intelligence."
Internet domains are unique, human-readable addresses that allow users to access websites. The.si suffix designates websites registered in Slovenia.
Ms. Herman acknowledged the September registration figures "stood out very clearly against the other months in the year" but expressed caution about attributing the entire increase solely to Trump's comments.
One possible explanation for the surge is cyber-squatting, in which individuals register domain names speculatively with the expectation of selling them for profit. A notable example: Rick Schwartz purchased men.com in 1997 for $15,000 and sold it seven years later for $1.32 million.
On Tuesday, Trump hosted a meeting with technology executives and signed an executive order instructing U.S. government departments and agencies to use the terms "SI" and "Super Intelligence" and to cease using "AI." Official correspondence, websites and reports are to replace "AI" with "SI."
Images of the signed executive order circulated online after the word "United States" was discovered to be misspelled beneath Trump's signature.
