So Susan, how does if feel to be the most talked to person on the planet?
It's a little odd actually. When I first found out years ago, it was kind of creepy and I did not speak to Siri. It was just to weird to have my own voice coming back [laughter]. I talk to myself enough as it is.
So how did all this happen?
I don't know. I really don't know. I don't know how my voice was chosen- when or by whom- because Siri was actually not created by Apple, it was created by three engineers. So it could' ve been these guys that chose my voice, could've been a team at Apple, or could've been Steve Jobs himself because he was very involved in the development of Siri.
So you had gone into do some voice work.
Right.
And tell me for people who don't know, …show more content…
There's a process called concatenation. When the recordings are done-- after the recordings are done technicians and computers go in and extract sounds, put them back together and those sentences are what become Siri's answers. So it's the programmers that determine everything Siri says, but during all those recordings we're just reading all kinds of crazy things to get all the sounds in the language. And so basically the voices-- we really had no idea exactly what we were doing, but in order for the concatenated voice sound more natural of course they would have to have a voice actor who was a native speaker for whatever country the phone was going into.
So you're a musician at heart. How does voice work differ from being a musician?
Well it's definitely related. You definitely-- you're using your voice and you have to have learned certain skills for certain things, but I got into voice over because of music. I use to sing a lot of backup vocals for people and I sang lead on a lot of jingles and things made for radio and TV commercials. One day I had sung on something and the voice actor didn't show up to read the copy for the spot. So the studio owner said, "Susan you don't have an accent, come over here and read this copy" and I went, "Oh I can do this." Yeah.
And then a career
It's a little odd actually. When I first found out years ago, it was kind of creepy and I did not speak to Siri. It was just to weird to have my own voice coming back [laughter]. I talk to myself enough as it is.
So how did all this happen?
I don't know. I really don't know. I don't know how my voice was chosen- when or by whom- because Siri was actually not created by Apple, it was created by three engineers. So it could' ve been these guys that chose my voice, could've been a team at Apple, or could've been Steve Jobs himself because he was very involved in the development of Siri.
So you had gone into do some voice work.
Right.
And tell me for people who don't know, …show more content…
There's a process called concatenation. When the recordings are done-- after the recordings are done technicians and computers go in and extract sounds, put them back together and those sentences are what become Siri's answers. So it's the programmers that determine everything Siri says, but during all those recordings we're just reading all kinds of crazy things to get all the sounds in the language. And so basically the voices-- we really had no idea exactly what we were doing, but in order for the concatenated voice sound more natural of course they would have to have a voice actor who was a native speaker for whatever country the phone was going into.
So you're a musician at heart. How does voice work differ from being a musician?
Well it's definitely related. You definitely-- you're using your voice and you have to have learned certain skills for certain things, but I got into voice over because of music. I use to sing a lot of backup vocals for people and I sang lead on a lot of jingles and things made for radio and TV commercials. One day I had sung on something and the voice actor didn't show up to read the copy for the spot. So the studio owner said, "Susan you don't have an accent, come over here and read this copy" and I went, "Oh I can do this." Yeah.
And then a career