— Ch. 1 · Origins And Development History —
Siri.
~5 min read · Ch. 1 of 6
In 2010, Apple acquired a small startup called Siri from SRI International. The project began as part of the CALO initiative funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Dag Kittlaus, Tom Gruber, and Adam Cheyer co-founded the original company. They named it after a Norwegian colleague named Sigrid. Her name meant victory and beauty in Old Norse. Steve Jobs directed the acquisition in April 2010. He had envisioned a digital assistant years earlier in a 1987 concept video known as Knowledge Navigator. Nuance Communications provided the speech recognition engine for the system. Neither Apple nor Nuance acknowledged this partnership until Paul Ricci confirmed it at a technology conference in 2013. The initial prototype used the Active platform developed jointly with École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Didier Guzzoni led the Ph.D. thesis on that platform before joining Siri as chief scientist. Apple released Siri as an app for iOS in February 2010. Two months later they removed it from the App Store after acquiring the team. The iPhone 4s launched on the 4th of October 2011 with a beta version of the assistant integrated into its operating system.
Evolution Of Voice Technology
Susan Bennett recorded the first American voice for Siri in July 2005. She did not know her recordings would eventually power a virtual assistant. A report from The Verge in September 2013 suggested Allison Dufty was the voice behind Siri. Dufty wrote on her website that she was absolutely not the voice of Siri. Bennett revealed her role in October 2013 and Ed Primeau confirmed it through audio forensics. Apple has never officially acknowledged her identity. Jon Briggs narrated the original British male voice for five or six years prior to discovery. He worked on BBC quiz shows like The Weakest Link before realizing his voice powered the device. Karen Jacobsen provided the Australian voice option known locally as GPS girl. Apple auditioned hundreds of candidates to find new female voices for iOS 11. They recorded several hours of speech using deep learning technology. In February 2022, Quinn became the first gender-neutral voice available to users. This update arrived with the iOS 15.4 developer release. The system now supports multiple personalities and expressions within a single voice model.