Apple’s Siri virtual personal assistant is among the primary feature that comes in any of the company’s products. Brain-child of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, this distinctive voice on iPhones does all the possible tasks it is assigned with — may that be reminding the user of a meeting at a particular time or notifying them about the weather. She even gives the best yet funny philosophical advices on life. As Apple’s senior vice president Phil Schiller pitched it initially, Siri is probably the “coolest feature of the iPhone 4S,” at the time of the launch.
But, did you know that the original voice behind Siri is a 67-year-old Atlanta-based singer named Susan Bennett?
When Bennett was finalised as the voice of Siri, she did not even use iPhone back then. She was working for a recording company and usually the voice artists weren’t informed where their work would be used. Nonetheless, it did not take long for her to realise that she will be the voice of the first of its kind digital assistant named Siri.
As reported by GadgetSnow, Bennett — who was hired by an Atlanta-based voice-recording company GM Voices, used to spend around four hours every day, five days a week reading out random sentences and phrases since 2005.
Bennett’s peculiar voice was picked up and further developed by a Menlo Park-based non-profit research institute called SRI International. The organisation is primarily known for building the first computer mouse prototype back in 1964. They reportedly launched Siri in Apple’s App Store following which; they received a call from Steve Jobs who made an offer to buy Siri off. Soon enough, Siri became America’s most-wanted voice.
“Most people don’t really pay attention to such voices because they are listening only for information. But if that voice becomes a persona like Siri, people seem to develop quite a relationship with it,” Bennett was reported as saying. “It was the first concatenated voice (synthesised voice) that sounded human. The astounding thing behind this was the technology,” she added.
With the release of iOS 7, Apple changed Siri’s voice by hiring new people with different accents and voices. However, Bennett’s contribution remained unaltered.
Apple, however, hasn’t confirmed that Bennett is the original voice of Siri.
