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Slovenian domain rush. Donald Trump’s choice to replace the term “Artificial Intelligence” with “Super Intelligence” has had a side effect in Slovenia. Registrations of internet domains with the national extension .si have increased rapidly, fueling speculative phenomena as well.
The episode recalls the success of Anguilla’s .ai domain, which has become a significant source of revenue for the Caribbean territory. After the former US president began promoting the term “Super Intelligence,” abbreviated as “SI,” requests to register .si domains increased significantly.
Slovenian domain rush: why it matters
According to data provided by Register.si, the organization managing the national registry, new registrations reached an average of 3,700 domains per day following Trump’s speech, whereas in August alone there were approximately 3,500 in total. The increase was described as “significant” by Klara Herman, spokesperson for Register.si.
On September 30, approximately 11,000 new .si registrations were made in a single day. In the last month, the total reportedly reached about 46,000 new domains, bringing the overall number of .si domains above the 220,000 mark.
“The use of the word ‘artificial’ makes it seem fake,” Trump had declared on September 22 during his address at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. “It is not fake; it is truly relevant.” In the same context, the former president argued that “Super Intelligence” was a more appropriate definition and announced the intention to use “SI” in official US documents.
The push toward the new term had begun earlier as well. Trump had indeed asked his followers on the social network Truth for suggestions on a new name for artificial intelligence, considering expressions such as “superior intelligence,” “extreme intelligence,” and “supreme intelligence.”
On September 29, furthermore, Trump signed an executive order requiring federal departments and agencies to use “Super Intelligence” and “SI” instead of “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” in official communications, websites, and reports.
What changes and what are the effects
The sharp increase in .si registrations could therefore be a form of domain name speculation. Those registering an address associated with a keyword, a trade name, or a potential trademark can indeed retain ownership for a set period and subsequently attempt to resell it to a company interested in using it for marketing and recognizability reasons.
A similar case involves Anguilla, a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean that uses the national domain .ai. The coincidence between the extension and the acronym universally associated with artificial intelligence has transformed the domain into an important economic resource for the territory.
According to the International Monetary Fund, registered .ai domains went from approximately 144,000 in July 2022, the year ChatGPT launched, to about 354,000 by the end of 2023. In that same year, registrations generated approximately $32 million in revenue for the government of Anguilla, equivalent to just over 20% of the territory’s total revenues.
Source and further reading on Slovenian domain rush: original article.
* Content created with the assistance of artificial intelligence systems.