Soon after a colleague emailed her, asking: “Isn’t this you?” Her 36-year-old son calls himself “Son of Siri” and joked that he’s had say “Stop, Mom” to Siri. It seemed everyone knew she was Siri the moment the iPhone 4S appeared in 2011. The belief that the voice of iPhone could only be a young, beautiful woman meshed with the fantasies of the largely male audience of tech.īut the damage was done and Bennett was forced to blow her cover. Despite Dufty’s protests to the contrary, telling visitors to her website that she is “absolutely, positively NOT the voice of Siri,” the story fit the desired image. That all changed when The Verge claimed in September that voiceover personality Allison Dufty was Siri’s voice. And so, consequently, I was very conservative about it for a long time,” she said. Why the long wait? Although the UK and Australian versions of Siri had already come out, “I wasn’t sure that I wanted that notoriety, and I also wasn’t sure where I stood legally. It took nearly a decade later before Bennett revealed to CNN that she was the voice of Siri. Turns out, ScanSoft later changed its name to Nuance.
SUSAN BENNETT SIRI NUANCE VOCALIZER SOFTWARE
GM Voices was hired by the software company ScanSoft.
SUSAN BENNETT SIRI NUANCE VOCALIZER SERIES
The cable network talked to Bennett, who recounted her journey.Īccording to Bennett, in 2005 she made a series of voice recordings for Atlanta-based GM Voices, which had become the go-to firm for companies looking to bring to life everything from spitting out your bank balance over the phone or telling you that your call is important. While neither Apple nor the company which later became Nuance won’t comment on Bennett’s claim, CNN interviewed lawyers and voice analysts who are confident she provided the first voice for Siri. “It seemed like everyone was clamoring to find out who the real voice behind Siri is, so I thought, well, you know, what the heck? This is the time,” she told the CNN.
Now she is speaking out about her role as the most famous unknown voice heard by millions of people… Her voice has been used to give life to machines ranging from the an ATM to a voice announcing directions inside the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International airport. Susan Bennett, a mom from Sandy Springs, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta, never wanted the spotlight. Now comes a middle-aged Atlanta mom who claims she’s the original voice behind Siri, providing a peak behind the world of talking machines. Able to speak directions to your favorite pizza parlor as well as carry on witty banter with celebrities, finding the voice behind your iPhone has become the holy grail for love-struck geeks everywhere. The mystique of Siri, Apple’s “personal assistant” for iOS, has been the mysterious female voice.