Siri, Apple’s popular voice assistant, is two years old today. And for the last two years Siri has set alarms, scheduled appointments, searched the Web, and fielded plenty of oddball questions, all through one iconic voice. On Friday Susan Bennett came forward to CNN to claim that she is, in fact, the original voiceover artist for Siri.
Siri first appeared with the introduction of the iPhone 4S back in October 2011. But according to Bennett, the vocals for Siri were recorded back in 2005. She spent four hours per day, every day for the month of July recording at GM Vocals for ScanSoft, which was working on a then-undisclosed project.
Apple hasn’t confirmed Bennett’s story, but an audio-forensics expert with 30 years of experience says that he is “100 percent certain” Bennett is the voice of Siri. Confusion over Siri’s origins in the blogosphere, as well as the new male counterpart Siri voice introduced in iOS 7, convinced Bennett it was finally time to step forward and put a face to the voice.
Bennett, though, is still rather quiet when it comes to sharing any personal information. She lives in the suburbs of Atlanta and won’t reveal her age. She claims she became involved in voice work in the 1970s “by accident.” It turned out to be a happy accident though, as today Bennett can be heard worldwide in commercials, GPS devices, and, of course, lots of iPhones and iPads.
You can meet the voice behind Siri and hear for yourself in the video below.
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