Trump's AI rebrand causes 'unprecedented' demand for Slovenian website names

Image source, Getty ImagesByLaura CressTechnology reporterPublished21 minutes agoPresident Donald Trump's push to rename AI may be behind an "unprecedented" rise in registrations for domain names in Slovenia, according to its official national registry.

The president wants AI to be called super intelligence - or SI - the same initials used by Slovenian websites.

Register.si spokesperson Klara Herman said 44,000 web addresses with the .si suffix had been registered in September, compared to less than 2,000 in August - an increase of more than 2,100%.

She said the scale of activity in late September was "unprecedented" compared to the previous 12 months.

President Trump called for the technology to be renamed during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on 11 September.

"It's not fake, it's actually amazing. But we have to be careful... welcome to the new world of super intelligence."

Internet domains are the unique human-readable addresses people type into their web browsers to access websites - like bbc.co.uk.

Herman said registrations for .si web addresses in September stood out "very clearly" against the other months in the year, although she was "cautious" about attributing the entire increase to only President Trump's comments.

One possible explanation for the purchases is cyber-squatting - where people speculatively register specific domain names in case they increase in value later on and can be sold for a profit.

For example, in 1997 Rick Schwartz, known as "The Domain King", bought the domain name men.com for $15,000 (£11,300). He sold it for $1.32 million seven years later.

On Tuesday, President Trump hosted a meeting of top technology bosses for what he called "an extraordinary gathering" of the people "building America's Golden Age".

He signed an executive order instructing US government departments and agencies to start using the terms "SI" and "Super Intelligence" and they should no longer acknowledge the use of the term AI.