The voice of Siri in the UK is male, unlike the US version which is a female. It has now been revealed that the voice of the UK Siri is Jon Briggs. The strange thing about all this is that he didn’t actually know that Apple was going to use his voice for Siri although nothing shady was happening. The story as we have been told says that the voiceover artist originally recorded 5,000 sentences for Scansoft. This company shortly after merged with Nuance Communications whos engine was then used by Apple to create Siri. Apple tried to keep Jon quiet although he hasn’t signed a contract with them. He first found out about being used in Siri when he saw an advert for Siri.
The 5,000 sentences recorded provided a base whereby Scansoft could then pull piece together the phonetics to make up words that he didn’t actually need to speak. This is also the reason why it is unlikely that other voices will join other than what’s there now and voices for other countries as they go live with Siri.
Although it was a surprise for Jon that his voice be used, we don’t believe anything fishy was happening with Apple (other than the request to keep him quiet about it).
Jon also provides the voice for many other devices such as TomTom and Garmin.
Take a look at the full interview over at the Telegraph.
Via: TheVerge
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