iOS 14.5 Beta 6 Adds Two New Siri Voices, No Longer Defaults to Female
The sixth beta of iOS 14.5 introduces two new Siri voices and no longer defaults to female, reports TechCrunch.
Apple is adding two new voices to Siri’s English offerings, and eliminating the default ‘female voice’ selection in the latest beta version of iOS. This means that every person setting up Siri will choose a voice for themselves and it will no longer default to the voice assistant being female, a topic that has come up quite a bit with regards to bias in voice interfaces over the past few years.
“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,” Apple said in a statement. “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 voices use talent recordings that are run through Apple’s neural text to speech engine. This results in a more organic flow to speech.
Apple also upgraded the Siri voices in Ireland, Russia, and Italy to use Neural TTS.
More details in the full report linked below…
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