The Telegraph this morning features an interview with Jon Briggs, the voice behind Apple’s popular Siri personal assistant in Britain. Briggs alledges that a public relations representative from Apple contacted the vocie-over specialist asking that he not speak publically about its product saying, “We are not about one person“.
href="http://cdn.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/jon_2051056c.jpg" class="lightbox" >src="http://cdn.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/jon_2051056c.jpg" alt="" title="jon_2051056c" width="460" height="287" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-25124" />
Briggs however had not been contracted by Apple, but instead by Scansoft, who merged with Nuance prior to be acquired by Apple. Briggs recorded over 5,000 sententces over a three week period.
“I did a set of recordings… spoken in a very particular way and only reading flat and even,” Mr Briggs said.
“Then they go away and take all the phonics apart, because ‘I’ have to be able to read anything you want, even if I’ve never actually recorded all those words.”
In the US, the default Siri option is female and her identity remains unknown. If Apple doesn’t contact Briggs, there is no story. Their secrecy is far more headline grabbing then revealing the man behind the mic.
Source: href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8879643/Apple-tried-to-silence-voice-of-Siri.html">The Telegraph
No comments:
Post a Comment