US President Donald Trump’s push to rename artificial intelligence as “super intelligence,” or SI, has coincided with a dramatic surge in registrations for Slovenia’s .si internet domain, according to the country’s official registry.
Register.si recorded 44,000 new .si addresses in September, compared with fewer than 2,000 in August, an increase of more than 2,100%.
The rise followed Trump’s September 11 speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where he argued that the term artificial intelligence sounded “fake” and proposed SI as an alternative.
Register.si spokesperson Klara Herman described activity in late September as unprecedented compared with the previous 12 months, while cautioning against attributing the entire increase solely to Trump’s comments.
On September 30 alone, the registry recorded 11,000 new registrations.
Another account from Register.si said registrations had averaged about 3,700 per day since Trump’s UN speech, compared with roughly 3,500 during the entire month of August.
The surge pushed the total number of registered .si domains above 220,000 by Tuesday.
The registry has also urged holders of trademarks, slogans and company names who do not already control corresponding .si domains to register them quickly.
One possible factor behind the buying is cyber-squatting, in which people acquire potentially valuable domain names speculatively in hopes of reselling them later.
Trump further formalized the terminology change on Tuesday while hosting leading technology executives at what he described as a gathering of people building America’s “Golden Age.”
He signed an executive order directing US government departments and agencies to use “SI” and “Super Intelligence” instead of AI in official correspondence, websites, reports and other communications.
Images of the signed order were subsequently mocked online after “United States” was misspelled beneath Trump’s signature.
The unusual demand has placed Slovenia’s national domain suffix in an international spotlight.
The country’s .si suffix was originally intended to identify Slovenian websites, but Trump’s preferred abbreviation has given it a new potential association with advanced technology.
Other Balkan domains have previously attracted international uses unrelated to geography, including Montenegro’s .me suffix.