Apple WWDC: Siri assistant gets a new voice on iPhone with iOS 11

The iPhone's chatterbox will get better at telling jokes

Andrew Griffin
Monday 05 June 2017 14:09 EDT
Comments
Craig Federighi, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering for Apple Inc, discusses the Siri desktop assistant for Mac OS Sierra
Craig Federighi, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering for Apple Inc, discusses the Siri desktop assistant for Mac OS Sierra (REUTERS)

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Apple has given Siri a new voice.

The virtual chatterbox found inside the iPhone now sounds much smarter and more human, according to the company, which unveiled the changes at WWDC.

The new voice uses machine learning to replicate the way that people actually speak, according to Apple's engineering head Craig Federighi.

It can now say words in various different ways, he said. He used the example of Siri reading out the weather forecast for the next three days – rather than simply saying the word "sunny" each day, for instance, it will now read each of them out in a different intonation.

Another example showed the assistant making a joke about loving machine learning because it is a "machine, learning". That was a joke that Mr Federighi suggested wouldn't have worked without the new voice.

Apple has worked hard to give the Siri assistant a sometimes cheeky approach to answering questions. But those jokes have sometimes fallen a little flat because the voice assistant could only read out each word in exactly the same way – no matter where it appeared in the sentence.

The changes will be available for both the female and male versions of the Siri voice, Mr Federighi said. The female voice is default in the US whereas the male one is the default in the UK, though users can choose which of the voices to use.

It was one of a range of changes to Siri, which also include the ability to ask for more information and to select responses by looking at the screen rather than reading them out.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in