Susan Bennett Says She Is the Real Voice of Siri, the Snippy Apple Personal Assistant
Susan Bennett Says She Is the Real Voice of Siri, the Snippy Apple Personal Assistant
Susan Bennett’s voice is everywhere. On commercials, in your car, on our phone, your computer. But no one knew who it was. Susan Bennett revealed that she is the original voice of Siri, Apple’s automated personal assistant.
Susan Bennett spoke up for herself in an interview with CNN. She explained how she gave voice to Apple’s personal assistant, the snarky, snippy Siri.
Since the 1970s, Susan Bennett worked doing voiceovers for automated systems. Susan Bennett’s first job was voicing Tilly the all-time teller, on the first ATM machine. Susan Bennett has also done voices for GPS devices, automated telephone systems and is the voice at Delta airlines terminals.
Susan Bennett told CNN “The Siri voices were recorded in 2005, in the month of July, four hours a day for the whole month. When I recorded those voices, I had absolutely no idea where they would end up.”
Susan Bennett did voice recordings for a database that constructs speech for ScanSoft, a software company that merged with Nuance Communications, which is believed to be the company that partnered with Apple to provide the technology behind Siri.
Susan Bennett thought she was recording her voice to bre used in company telephone systems, but in 2011 she first heard her voice as Siri on Apple’s iPhone 4s.
Susan Bennett said “The first time I actually heard my voice as Siri was when my friend emailed me and said, ‘Isn’t this you?’ Bennett said. “And because I didn’t have the newest version of the iPhone, I went to the Apple site and that’s where I heard the voice, and I just went, ‘Ohh, hmm. That is me.’”
Apple hasn’t confirmed that the Susan Bennett recordings were the ones that were used to create the original Siri voice.
So why is Siri so snippy? Bennett explains "There are some people that just can read hour upon hour upon hour, and it's not a problem. For me, I get extremely bored ... So I just take breaks. That's one of the reasons why Siri might sometimes sound like she has a bit of an attitude. Those sounds might have been recorded the last 15 minutes of those four hours."
