British voice artist Jon Briggs, widely known as the voice of ‘The Weakest Link’, is also the voice for Siri in the United Kingdom, but as he revealed in an interview with the Telegraph, he didn’t even know until he heard his voice in an iPhone 4S commercial, and has been told by Apple to keep quiet about it.
Briggs reveals that he was contacted by an Apple public relations representative, who called him shortly after the launch of the iPhone 4S, and asked him not to speak publicly about his involvement, or on which products his voice was used.
So, how did Briggs become the mail voice for Siri without knowing about it? The Telegraph shares the details:
He recorded 5,000 sentences over three weeks for a firm called Scansoft. In 2005 it merged with a company called Nuance, which now provides the voice recognition technology for Siri.
“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.”
Interestingly, that same set of recordings was used to create the announcements at Kings Cross Station in London. Apple has not been in touch with Briggs, who received a one-time payment for the recordings nearly a decade ago, since they called to tell him to keep quiet about his involvement.
