Siri lives in Apple’s first smart speaker, the HomePod, and it sounds like the digital personal assistant has been given a small tweak in some regions.
The idea appears to be to make Siri a bit more human-like, or sound more human at the very least. The speaking voice is a bit clearer, according to reports, and more natural in tone. The change to Siri’s speaking voice appears to be live only in the United Kingdom and Australia, but the tweak is for both the male and female speaking voices in both regions. The change is specifically in place for the HomePod, but that may change at some point in the future if this is just the start of a wider rollout.
And while HomePod users can select various region-based speaking voices, the changes appear to only be present in the same regions the speaking voice represents. So if you choose to have an Australian male represent Siri on your HomePod in the United States, you won’t hear the change. Thanks to Twitter user @callumjcoe, you can hear the change in the video below.
So will the real #Siri please stand up. pic.twitter.com/8a8LCyarqI
— Callum (@callumjcoe) February 13, 2019
Whether or not Apple is simply testing a change before a wider rollout remains to be seen, however that is certainly possible. Maybe even likely, considering it would be very strange to have two different speaking voices for Siri in the same region. When that rollout will happen is unknown.
Based on what you can hear in the audio recording, what do you think of the new tweak?
Siri hasn’t necessarily been completely forgotten by Apple, even if it may seem like it has sometimes. The Siri team recently picked up a new leader in John Giannandrea, which is certainly good news and makes one hopeful that WWDC this year –which is expected to kick off June 3— will have some good news for Apple’s digital personal assistant. Especially since Siri has improved quite a bit over the years already, but there is definitely still room to grow.
[via MacRumors; @callumjcoe]
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