In a previous post, I announced the return of Telstra’s free calls to Santa for 2024.

In that post, we were waiting for Santa to come online, but I had already determined where he was hiding in the phone network. If you believe Google Dialler, the geographic location for this number is a place called Rawdon Vale which is a country area. However, since numbers are not geographically tied anymore, this is likely just a bit of a red herring.

Anyway, rather than spoil the fun of the system by posting about it while it was still live, I decided to place a few calls to it in my limited time and then hang on until everything was done for the year before putting out this post.

A Default Call

When calling with a muted microphone for a silent call, this is how the system responds. As an uncut recording, the timings are accurate here.

Direct Link: tlssanta24-default-call.mp4

The Supercut

Rather than make individual cuts of each phrase, I decided (like last year) to put as much as I could into one recording that demonstrates the breadth of the system’s capabilities, but also tries to do so by subverting the system wherever possible to try to be funny. With the additional changes this year, it was a bit more difficult to make something “funny”. This is probably the one you want to be listening to!

Direct Link: tlssanta24-supercut.mp4

Oh, and Santa … there is an orange laptop … like this one! Silly AI doesn’t know about this legendary product, tsk tsk!

System Behaviour

The system proceeds through a number of distinct call phases, with a system that targets a call length of around three-minutes – good payphone etiquette. I’ve noted down each of the phases. This year, it seems the voice recognition is marginally worse and the response delays can be lengthy at times. Perhaps those cloud servers are very busy! Rather than go all-out like in 2023, this time there won’t be individual segmented recordings, only the “supercut” above that has most of these “features” demonstrated.

Here are the phases, in order:

Phase 1: Prelude

The beginning of the call indicates call recording, likely for legal reasons, but has simplified and shortened the message compared to last year.

[Background Music] “Hello. Eric the elf speaking. I’m helping Santa by recording this call. It helps him remember everyone’s Christmas wishes. Okay, please hold while I connect you to Santa.”

Phase 2: Name Sequence Prompt

This year, a key change appears that the system does not reprompt for the name and the system is especially picky about what names are accepted and which names are “censored”. Interestingly, you can get the system to accept “Eric the Elf” and “Santa Claus” which makes for an illogical call. The latter was previously blocked, but not this year!

[Jingles] “Ho, ho, ho! Hello there, it’s Santa speaking and what’s your name?”

Name Recognised:

“Oh, [Name], I thought it was you!”

Name Hard-Fail/Censored or Not Recognised:

“Oh, I thought it was you!”

Phase 3: Reindeer Sequence Prompt

This time around, it seems the naughty or nice question comes up fast and the system assumes the child has been nice, not re-prompting for an answer in case of a failure to recognise.

“Thank you for calling me all the way from Australia. I’m so excited about Christmas this year. The elves and I have been busy making the most wonderful presents. I was just checking my naughty and nice list when you called. I do check it twice. Do you think you’re on my naughty or nice list?”

Nice or Fail/Not Recognised:

“Ah yes, [sound of flicking pages], here you are, right here on my nice list! Well done [name], you should be very proud of yourself.” There’s still [n] days until Christmas, so keep up the good work!”

* Phrase in underline appears to be optional and wasn’t present in early calls to the service. Interestingly, it will say “one days until Christmas” even though we all know it should be “one day”.

Naughty:

“Well, you know, it’s not too late to make the nice list. Do something good and that will put you back on the nice list right away. There’s still [n] days until Christmas. I know you can do it.”

Phase 4: Wonderful Time of Year Prompt

This is a new segment for this year and the only segment where it seems there are three possible responses.

“Christmas truly is the most wonderful time of year. Are you excited for Christmas?”

Yes:

“I bet you are. I hope you have some fun plans to spend Christmas with family and friends. It’s all about being together after all.”

No:

“Oh, well, maybe as it gets closer, you’ll feel differently. There’s so much to enjoy about this time of year. Great food and fun holidays. But most of all, it’s so good to be together with those you love.”

Default/Unrecognised:

“I love that everyone enjoys this time of year in different ways. But most of all I love that, all over the world, I get to see children and their families enjoying time together.”

Phase 5: Present Sequence Prompt

Now we get to the crux of the call – talking about presents. This year, it seems the system is quite slow – there’s a noticeable length of silence after speaking before the system responds and in a case or two, I’ve had the system just “hang” in silence for a while before throwing a response as if it didn’t understand. The system is much more picky with what it will talk about, but also, it has new knowledge about Christmas topics which it is happy to share.

“I’ve got a few more minutes before Eric the elf needs me in the workshop, but before I do that, I’d love you to tell me, what present would you like for Christmas?”

Responses and follow-up questions will vary depending if the system knows what the present is! Often will refer to a property of the gift (e.g. colour) or the purpose (e.g. how you would use it) or other variations of the gift. Best refer to the supercut audio if you want to hear what the system can handle.

Phase 6: Variable Question Sequence

This section follows the answer for the gift and in quite a few calls, I solicited a similar bank of questions to last year. T