Meet the Voice Behind Siri 114
An anonymous reader writes in with a story about an actress who claims to be the voice behind Siri. "Own an iPhone or iPad? Since Siri was released on the iPhone 4S in 2011, I bet you, like me, have been wondering who the real voice behind Apple Virtual voice assistant Siri is. She has provided weather forecast, restaurants tips and has power announcements at airport around the world. Well, the real voice behind Siri has been revealed, and she is Atlanta-based Actress Susan Bennett. While her name might not ring a bell to you, her friends , those who have worked with her, her family and even forensics expert recognized her voice, and says she is the real Siri."
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To Mel Blanc? That's pretty weird, man.
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Wow (Score:5, Funny)
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You know, as my eyes rolled at the appearance of another gasbag entry from Sir Haselton the Long-Winded this morning, I knew that I should be thankful. That in the past there were more annoying personalities in the past. I just couldn't remember any of them.
Thank you, A.C. Thank you for reminding me of that clown.
It'd be like going out with Janice from Friends (Score:1)
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So? (Score:2)
whoopdeeeffingdoo
I liked Raj's version better (Score:3, Funny)
MUCH better looking.
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Not to anyone who watches the show... and I'd imagine that your reference is equally unobscure to people who watch whatever show you may have been referring to.
But how popular is that show within the nerd demographic? Compare that to the popularity of BBT, and its popularity among the kinds of people who would frequent a site like Slashdot.
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Little compared to what? The whole world? Sure... compared to other countries? Not so much.
The USA is the third largest country in the world by population, and the 4th by geographical area. In the English speaking world, it is the largest by population by an overwhelming amount, and only slightly smaller geographically than Canada. Since most people on Slashdot speak English here, it's really not that out of line to make cultural references here that are extremely likely to be understood by America
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Implied ad-hominems aside, although yes, the USA is a very distant third in terms of overall population... it is still overwhelmingly in the lead in terms of english speakers. More than double, in fact, the number of total english speakers as are found in any other single country, and this is including non-native english speakers (the country with the 2nd most number of english speakers is India, having about 120 million or so). If you only count native english speakers, the USA has 6 times english speak
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Words.
Just words.
We're done here.
Who cares? (Score:1)
Fix your crappy mobile site (and the new exciting alpha desktop version, come to that), and spend less time on this nonsense. Thanks!
The Jane Barbie Story (Score:1)
One thing is not a surprise (Score:1)
I knew it wouldn't turn out to be some fat cow with a nice voice, because Apple was involved and they knew that she would step forward eventually.
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Slashdot... 72 hours behind CNN... (Score:2)
And CNN is 48 hours behind facebook.
Which means that anything I see on Facebook is reported by Slashdot a week late. Holy fracking catfish, it's time to stop coming to this website.
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And a manual one at that.
Perhaps the reason why it took a week is because for a week nobody thought it was newsworthy enough to submit here...
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Re:Slashdot... 72 hours behind CNN... (Score:5, Informative)
No one cares if stuff like this comes late. I'd be more concerned about using Facebook as a news source.
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No one cares if stuff like this comes late. I'd be more concerned about using Facebook as a news source.
I'd be more concerned about using Facebook, period.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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She must be a geocacher.
Yes (Score:3, Informative)
Hour after hour, she read nonsensical phrases and sentences so that the "ubergeeks" -- as she affectionately calls them; they leave her awestruck -- could work their magic by pulling out vowels, consonants, syllables and diphthongs, and playing with her pitch and speed.
Re:Susan Bennett?? (Score:5, Informative)
So, does Susan really mean that her voice was picked apart and her phonemes were sampled and are being used for Siri's American English female voice? Phonemes are the basic building blocks of human speech (e.g. ah, eh, oh, ffff, etc)
Actually, in the CNN article about this that I read, she says exactly that. She says she sat in her home recording booth for 4 hours at a time for a whole year reading nonsensical phrases given to her so that they could later be pulled apart and analyzed.
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Actually, in the CNN article about this that I read, she says exactly that. She says she sat in her home recording booth for 4 hours at a time for a whole year reading nonsensical phrases given to her so that they could later be pulled apart and analyzed.
Except I think Apple uses bigger units than phonemes as building blocks. I think there will be even quite a few complete words that are recorded. I don't know about the size of the Siri recording, but high quality voices on the Mac are several hundred megabytes each.
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She says she sat in her home recording booth for 4 hours at a time for a whole year reading nonsensical phrases given to her so that they could later be pulled apart and analyzed.
Unfortunately Apple Maps interpreted those phrases as actual place names located in the Australian desert.
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So is she like that voice actor for that video game who was all upset and making a stink for not being as rich as a movie star?
Mark Hamill?
Apple related news... (Score:2)
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The Dilemma of complaining that everybody is complaining... You have to complain yourself.
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He didn't complain, he simply made a suggest to those who are complaining.
Don't worry so much about being quick to look clever. Take a moment and think.
Thank god (Score:5, Funny)
I'm glad this mystery has finally come to a close. I've had years of endless conversations (some actually broke out into fisticuffs) with co-workers about the likelihood that Siri was simply a generic wave form generated on a 1973 Rowland 385x tube synth (I love my old Rowland!!!1). One co-worker (Bryhan) argued that he could actually hear the pitch-shift in one of the particular tones of Siri's condescending passages suggesting it was in fact a male voice with some clever over-dubbing from magnetic tape (backwards). I've wondered about this for years and have lost much sleep over it. So glad it's finally came to light. Take that Bryhan, you insensitive clod!
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by the way, the Walrus was Paul.
and now the making of Siri: (Score:1)
a better clip:
http://www.wimp.com/voicesiri/
coming from the article:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/17/4596374/machine-language-how-siri-found-its-voice
Female Siri?!?! (Score:1)
Vocaloid does it better (Score:1)
*Kicks feet up* Slow news day.
Oh snap (Score:2)
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It's a rip-off to provide people a reasonable wage for their services and likeness, then hope to benefit from that?
She must be really busy (Score:2)
She must be really busy. How does she find time to do anything else?
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Not sure I get the point of your comment.
She is, apparently, a reasonably well respected voice actress, doing work for a number of companies.
We already knew she was a hot redhead. (Score:2)
We found out here [wikia.com]
Small Wonder (Score:2)
Big Bang Theory (Score:1)
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Why would we want to know this?
I don't know, how many of you are there?
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I don't know, how many of you are there?
"My precious, it make-es the beautiful sounds!"
Eh, on second thought, I was going for facetious there, but it came out a little too close to what I've seen...
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Finally, a face to my best friend and who I always ask to marry me.
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These kinds of stories have been on /. for a long time. That's why comments of the form "this isn't news for nerds" are such a cliche.