Susan Bennett voices her feelings on being Siri
Susan Bennett, a 64-year-old Zumbaloving Atlanta suburbanite, shocked tech geeks, overconnected teens and men attracted to the sound of her digital voice when she revealed this month that she is the original voice of Siri, the iPhone persona who helped Zooey Deschanel identify the sound of rain and Samuel L. Jackson find organic mushrooms for his risotto.
She has a storyline on “The Big Bang Theory” and makes the seemingly farfetched premise of Spike Jonze’s upcoming film “Her,” about a man who falls in love with the voice of his phone’s operating system, not so unbelievable.
Bennett’s disclosure, made to CNN, has sent the thin-framed voice-over artist on a media whirlwind, compelling her to secure a publicist, an agent and even a Twitter handle (@SiriouslySusan). The following is an edited transcript of a conversation with Bennett.
Q: Since you’ve come out as Siri, do people say, “You get melost all the time”?
A: I’ve had very few complaints. I’ve had emails from people saying, “Oh, I’m so sorry I’ve been cursing at you all these years.”
Q: Doyou remember the first thing you asked yourself?
A: I don’t. But I have asked Siri certain questions about the fact that we’re related, and she refuses to admit it. She ditched me. Q: Doyou get free iPhones? A: No, I do not. I have a new iPhone 5s, and I have to say the OS 7 is a bit of an adjustment for me. That’s the great irony of the voice of Siri. I’m not technical at all. I’m constantly passing it over to my son and saying, “Fix this for me.”
Q: Apple’s newiOS 7 mobile oper- ating system comes with a newincarnation of Siri. Do you feel a sense of loss now that there’s a new voice?
A: An audiologist emailed to say, “I think that’s still you. They’ve just manipulated the voice more.” So I think I’m still in there a little bit. I’m what they call Siri classic. As time goes on, I think there are going to be lots of voices, which I think is nice. Not everyone is attracted to the original Siri voice.
Q: But there were also tons of guys who were superattracted to the Siri voice. Have people told you about that?
A: A bunch of friends say, “You should do a naughty Siri app.” Though Apple would definitely not like that.
Q: What was the process of creating Siri?
A: The original recordings took place in July 2005 for a text-to-speech company. It was four hours a day, weekdays, for the entire month. The only thing I knew at the time was that my voice would be used in phone systems.
Q: Did they have you read dictionaries?
A: I read sentences that were specifically created to utilize the greatest combination of vowels, consonants, diphthongs, syllables in the English language. A lot of them were nonsensical sentences and phrases. Then the uber-brain went in there and picked out the different sounds and put them back together, and they created their own sentences. The process is called concatenation.
Q: You’re still freaking meout with every sentence you speak.
A: I’m sorry. I’m sorry.