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British voice of Siri only found out about it when he heard himself on TV

British voice of Siri only found out about it when he heard himself on TV

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The voice of Siri in the UK only found out about it through a TV advert featuring his work.

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jon briggs
jon briggs

You probably need no introduction to Siri, the voice-based personal assistant Apple introduced in the iPhone 4S, but how about the human behind that voice? In the UK, Siri is personified by a slightly posh male voice, which we've now discovered belongs to an experienced voiceover artist by the name of Jon Briggs. The thing is, he only recently uncovered that fact himself — by hearing his voice on the latest iPhone ads on TV.

Some six years ago, says Jon, he recorded a set of 5,000 sentences for Scansoft, a company that then merged with Nuance Communications, who in turn provides the voice recognition engine inside Siri. Thus, his prior work has now found a rather unexpected (and massive) new stage to demonstrate his talents to the world. Briggs was compensated for his initial voiceover work and there's no suggestion of impropriety here, though it does strike us as rather impersonal for him not to have been contacted and informed about being used in Siri. Apple has been in touch with Briggs, but only to ask that he doesn't talk about Siri, with the added message that "we're not about one person." For his reaction to this and more on his career, which includes the popular quiz show The Weakest Link and satnav voice directions for both TomTom and Garmin, check out the links below.