Registrations of Slovenia's national domain ".si" have surged after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the federal government to use SI instead of AI.

On Oct. 7, Japanese media outlet Gigazine reported that Trump signed an executive order on Sept. 29 directing the U.S. administration to use the term Super Intelligence (SI) instead of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in official documents, websites and external communications.

Demand for Slovenia's country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) ".si" then rose rapidly. Register.si said .si registrations in September jumped 2,199 percent from the previous month. About 11,000 were newly registered in a single day on Sept. 30, the day after the executive order was signed. The registry said it was difficult to conclude the entire increase was due to Trump's policy.

A similar trend appeared at web hosting company Hostinger. With about 4,300 .si domains registered on Sept. 30 and about 5,400 on Oct. 1, .si became the second best-selling domain after .com. More than half of buyers were users in the United States and India.

Not all of the demand was for actual AI or SI services. Of the .si domains classified by Hostinger, only about 3 percent had names clearly related to AI. An analysis said many may have been registered for preemption or resale aimed at future price increases.

.si is managed by Register.si under Slovenia's public institution ARNES, and individuals and companies overseas can also register it. Hostinger cited its annual cost of about $12, or about 16,100 won, which is cheaper than .ai, and the ease of securing desired names as factors behind rising demand. It forecast that it was unlikely to replace .ai in the short term.

Some have also raised a theory of a direct conflict of interest between the surge in domain registrations and the Trump family, based on the fact that First Lady Melania Trump is from Slovenia. Evidence for that has not been confirmed.