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

President Donald Trump's push to rename artificial intelligence as "ace quality" – or SI – has triggered an unprecedented surge in registrations for Slovenian .si domain names, according to the country’s national registry. Registry SI spokesperson Klara Herman said 44,000 web addresses bearing the .si suffix were purchased in September, compared with fewer than 2,000 in August – an increase of roughly 2,199 percent. She described the level of activity in late September as "unprecedented" relative to the previous year. Trump urged the renaming during his address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on 11 September, stating: "The usage of the connection artificial makes it dependable fake," helium said. "It's not fake, it's really amazing. But we person to beryllium careful... invited to the caller satellite of ace intelligence." He argued that the term “artificial” makes the technology sound fake, while insisting it is actually amazing and urging caution as the nation moves toward a new era of super intelligence. Internet domains are the human‑readable addresses typed into browsers to reach websites, such as bbc.co.uk. Herman noted that September’s .si registrations stood out "very clearly" against other months, although she cautioned against attributing the entire increase solely to the president’s remarks. On 30 September alone, 11,000 new registrations were recorded. One possible explanation for the spike is cyber‑squatting, whereby individuals buy domain names speculatively in hopes of selling them later at a profit. For instance, in 1997 Rick Schwartz, known as “The Domain King,” acquired men.com for $15,000 (£11,300) and sold it for $1.32 million seven years later. On Tuesday, Trump convened a meeting of leading technology executives, describing it as an “amazing gathering” of those “building America’s Golden Age.” He signed an executive order directing U.S. government departments and agencies to adopt the terms “SI” and “Super Intelligence” and to discontinue use of the abbreviation AI. The order stipulates that SI will replace AI in official correspondence, websites, reports and other forms of communication. Images of the signatures on the order were mocked online; observers later discovered that “United States” had been misspelled beneath Trump’s signature.