Apple adds two brand new voices to Siri in iOS 14.5 and no longer uses female voice by default

Apple released the iOS 14.5 beta version to fix some bugs and make adjustments to the Siri voice assistant. This adjustment mainly involves diversity/inclusiveness.

Apple says:

“We’re excited to introduce two new Siri voices for English speakers and the option for Siri users to select the voice they want when they set up their device,” a statement from Apple reads. “This is a continuation of Apple’s long-standing commitment to diversity and inclusion, and products and services that are designed to better reflect the diversity of the world we live in.”

The new version adds two additional voices to Siri assistant and no longer uses female voices by default. Users must choose a specific voice as the default.

Here’s a recording of Siri’s new lineup of American voices in iOS 14.5. Voices 1 and 4 are the existing ones, voices 2 and 3 are the new ones. pic.twitter.com/6emei4B3Z9

— John Gruber (@gruber) April 1, 2021

Apple has added two new voices for English users in the latest beta. When the user uses Siri for the first time, the system will pop up a prompt box for the user to select the specified voice.

For this reason, Apple specially recruited dubbers for the two newly added voices, which were collected and then handed over to the neural network for processing and then transferred to the voice engine for local operation.

In this way, these two voices sound more natural and have a better accent and smoother transition between different words, which can also improve the user experience.

The newly added voice-only supports English speakers, and the new neural network engine and speech engine have been launched for multiple languages.

Via: TechCrunch