The voice actress who purportedly did the voice for North American Siri has stepped forward. Her name is Susan Bennett, and she was recently interviewed by CNN.
Siri's voice is different from country to country. In some places the voice is male, in some it's female. Siri's developers use different voice actors to sample sounds to create its speech, and the actors who voiced the samples used by Siri in the UK and Australia have already revealed their identities. But one "voice" for Siri stands alone - the one used in North America.
Today marks Siri's second anniversary as an Apple product. It debuted on the iPhone 4S on October 4, 2011. Long in "beta," Siri finally emerged as a finished product with the release of iOS 7 last month. Now you can change Siri's gender from female to male, but many of us stick with the "regular" voice.
Bennett is an accomplished voice actress whose voice can be heard in GPS systems, commercials, phone systems, in airports and elsewhere. She says she recorded the samples used in Siri back in 2005 for a company called ScanSoft. She said she worked through the month of July, four hours a day, recording samples.
As she explained it, Bennett was asked to read nonsense sentences and phrases that developers then concatenated to build words, sentences and paragraphs.
Apple hasn't confirmed Siri's secret identity, but voice experts say Bennett's the real thing. You can watch a video interview with her after the jump.
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Lily Allen
Nadine Velazquez
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