Roger Fingas
Apple has stealthily updated Siri's British and Australian voices on the HomePod, apparently seeking to make them clearer and more natural-sounding.
The extent of the rollout is uncertain. Most social media anecdotes stem from the regions the accents are based on, which could mean Apple is only gradually deploying the new voices, even though the accents can be selected in any country.
Apple first began introducing more natural voices to Siri with the launch of iOS 11 in 2017. Prior to that Siri's robotic sound was sometimes the subject of jokes, even if it didn't affect functionality.
So will the real #Siri please stand up. pic.twitter.com/8a8LCyarqI
— Callum (@callumjcoe) February 13, 2019
That functionality has garnered more serious criticism in the past two years. Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are widely considered superior, with more skills and better comprehension. They're also supported on a broader number of devices, whereas Siri works only with Apple hardware.
The company is believed to be working on Siri improvements, which could be showcased at WWDC 2019 this June. There developers should catch previews of the next major versions of iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS.
The updated Siri voices were first highlighted by MacRumors.
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25 Comments
As there is no option to buy a HomePod in the Netherlands, I bought two in France and chose English (UK).
And indeed, today Siri is a different person :) (a lot less snooty British ;) )
I've tried the different languages and they are fun to play with. One neat thing to do is to change the language and then ask Siri to tell a joke. You get local humor.
can't understand why they wasted their time doing that. maybe if they should sit down and figure out how to make it control Spotify - you know - like every other voice assistant.