Trump's statement on renaming artificial intelligence caused an internet domain boom in Slovenia
Donald Trump's proposal to replace the term "artificial intelligence" with "superintelligence" has led to a record surge in interest in Slovenia's national domain zone — ".si". As reported by Foreign Policy, within days the country received thousands of new applications for website address registration.
During his speech at the UN General Assembly, the US President stated that in all official American documents, the technology should be renamed "Super Intelligence," or "SI" for short. According to Trump, the word "artificial" sounds fake, while the new name sounds more accurate and convincing.
This statement immediately impacted the internet space of Slovenia — the country where the politician's wife, Melania Trump, comes from. It is this small European state with a population of 2.1 million people that has the national top-level domain ".si" assigned to it.
While usually the local registrar recorded about a thousand new applications per month, immediately after Trump's speech, the situation changed dramatically. On the very first day, more than 2,000 new addresses were registered, and on the next day, another 4,000+. Thus, the total number of Slovenian domains for the first time in history exceeded 200,000, and the September figure surpassed 10,000 registrations.
Commercial hosting providers quickly reacted to the new trend. The Lithuanian company Hostinger began promoting .si domains with the slogan: "AI is now called superintelligence. Register your .si domain." The company offers the first year of using such an address for $11.99, subsequent years for $16.99.
This situation resembles the history of the British overseas territory of Anguilla, which owns the ".ai" domain. After the explosive growth in popularity of ChatGPT in 2022, the small island earned about $32 million in a year from selling its addresses to technology companies, which accounted for more than 20% of its total budget revenues for the year.
Whether Slovenia will be able to replicate such success is still unclear. ARNES, which manages the national domain, charges registrars 10 euros for each registered address. Therefore, Register.si emphasizes that talks of "Slovenia's millions in earnings" from the new hype have no real basis. At the same time, they advise owners of trademarks, slogans, and companies that do not yet have a corresponding address in the .si zone to register it as soon as possible.
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