Voice of Siri: UK Male Speaks Out About New-Found Fame
The voice of “Daniel,” the male United Kingdom version of the iPhone 4S’s voice-recognition personal assistant Siri, has broken his silence.
In a candid interview with The Telegraph, Jon Briggs, a former technology journalist, revealed he recorded “Daniel” for a company called Scansoft that subsequently merged in 2005 with Nuance, the voice recognition technology for Siri.
“I got paid a decent sum by Scansoft,” he said. “I love Apple’s products and I think Siri is a game-changer.”
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Briggs recorded roughly 5,000 sentences in sessions three weeks.
“I did a set of recordings with Scansoft five or six years ago, for text-to-speech services,” said Briggs. “Five thousand sentences over three weeks, spoken in a very particular way and only reading flat and even. Then they go away and take all the phonics apart, because I have to be able to read anything you want, even if I’ve never actually recorded all those words.”
Briggs said he forgot about the work, was not notified by Apple that the company had used his lines, and didn’t even know about it until he heard his own voice on a U.K. television ad for the iPhone 4S.
“You’re not allowed to license the voice to make money,” Briggs said. “So Apple’s Siri is part of the service once you’ve bought the phone.”
Briggs is a now sought-after technology voiceover actor, the voice of the satellite navigation systems for Garmin, TomTom, Jaguar, Land Rover, Audi and Porsche.
“Voice defines how you think about somebody; age, sex, educational background. So changing Daniel would be more than about technology,” Briggs added.
However, for some Brits, Briggs was not their cup of tea.
“Apple really needs to bring out more voices with regional accents. UK Siri sounds like a posh person from the south of England, an accent which is quite abhorrent to most people who live in the North of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. I live in Ireland and can't stand that voice,” said one British user online. “I'll stick to US Siri until Apple brings out an Irish or Scottish Siri.”
Siri is currently available in English with different versions for Australia, Britain, and the United States, and supports French and German.
