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According to CNN, actress Susan Bennett says her voice was used for Apple’s virtual assistant Siri.
“I wasn’t sure that I wanted the notoriety,” Susan Bennett told CNN, explaining her delay in coming forward, “and I also wasn’t sure where I stood legally.”
Susan Bennett says the Siri voice was recorded in 2005 at GM Voices on behalf of ScanSoft, a software company that was working on an undisclosed project.
Apple did not confirm Susan Bennett’s story, but an audio-forensics expert says he is “100 percent certain” she is the voice, and Bennett’s lawyer, who cannot confirm the details of confidential contracts, notes he’s had “substantial negotiations” with “parties along the economic food chain” regarding hiring Bennett as the voice of Siri.
Susan C. Bennett is one of the busiest and most versatile voice-over artists/vocalists working today.
Susan Bennett says her voice was used for Apple’s virtual assistant Siri
She is a graduate of Brown University; member of the band Laugh & Cry, affiliated with The Berklee School of music, and featuring renowned bassist, Abe Laboriel; backup vocalist on tour with Burt Bacharach and Roy Orbison.
Susan Bennett has an experience of more than 20 years doing voice-overs and singing both live and in studio for such clients as Ford, Coca-Cola, Fisher Price, McDonald’s, The Home Depot, Goodyear, VISA, Macy’s, Club Med, Delta Airlines, and The Cartoon Network.
She is a member of SAG-AFTRA, The American Federation of Musicians, and Women in Film.
Along with her husband, guitarist and composer Rick Hinkle, Susan Bennett is co-owner of Audiocam Music, a full service recording studio.
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Google is unveiling an enhanced version of Voice Search to its iPhone app that could rival Apple’s inbuilt Siri software.
Google announced on Wednesday that the new features will be added to its iOS app on iPhone and iPad (iOS version 4.2+) within the next few days.
Voice Search on iOS will be able to find map information, weather results, and information on individual people and topics.
“Often the most natural way to ask a question is by asking aloud” said Amit Singhai, Senior Vice President of Google Search, on Google’s official blog.
Google is unveiling an enhanced version of Voice Search to its iPhone app that could rival Apple's inbuilt Siri software
“So we’ve combined our speech recognition expertise, understanding of language and the Knowledge Graph so that Voice Search can better interpret your questions and sometimes speak the answers back as full sentences.
“You just need to tap the microphone icon and ask your question, the same way you’d ask a friend. For example, ask <<What movies are playing this weekend?>> and you’ll see your words streamed back to you quickly as you speak.
“Then Google will show you a list of the latest movies in theaters near you, with schedules and even trailers. It works for everything from celebrity factoids to the height of Kilimanjaro and more. When Google can supply a direct answer to your question, you’ll get a spoken response too.
“These are baby steps, but important ones on our way to building the search engine of the future – one that is much more intelligent and useful than it was just a few years ago. It’s a very exciting time to be working in this field.”
Samsung has admitted it made a mistake in releasing a software update that removed the search function from international versions of its Galaxy S3 smartphone.
The “stability update” disabled the Galaxy S3’s ability to search the web, contacts, apps and other on-device material through a single interface.
The move had been thought to be linked to Apple’s claim that the innovation infringed one of its US patents.
Samsung said a fix was imminent.
“The most recent software upgrade for the Galaxy S3 in the UK included the inadvertent removal of the universal search function,” it said in a statement.
“Samsung will provide the correct software upgrade within the next few days.”
The "stability update" disabled the Galaxy S3's ability to search the web, contacts, apps and other on-device material through a single interface
Users who downloaded the update had not been warned that it would remove the advanced search function when the software was installed on GT-i9300 (S3) models available in the UK and other places outside the US.
It appears the firm meant only to prevent some US models from being able to use a Google-powered search tool to show information sourced from within the phone’s memory in its results.
Apple has claimed the technology infringed its patent to a unified search interface which it uses in its Siri app to collate results from a range of sources.
The iPhone maker has launched a lawsuit over the matter in the US and had briefly secured a sales ban of another Samsung handset – the Galaxy Nexus – on the basis that the inclusion of the feature threatened “irreparable harm”.
A Washington-based court will review the case on 20 August.
When Apple’s voice-activated assistant Siri has been asked over the weekend “What is the best smartphone ever?”, it appeared to favor the iPhone’s rival, Nokia’s Lumia 900.
But Siri now responds to the same question with a jovial: “Wait… there are other phones?”
Nokia has accused Apple of “overriding the software” after the quirk was noticed.
Apple would not confirm that a change had been made.
The Siri software, which is featured on Apple’s iPhone 4S, uses the computational search engine Wolfram Alpha to serve answers to some questions.
For a question such as “what is the best smartphone ever?”, Wolfram Alpha would pool available reviews and comment in order to come up with what it feels is the right result.
When Apple Siri has been asked over the weekend "What is the best smartphone ever", it appeared to favor Nokia’s Lumia 900
In this instance, the “best” result was determined by reviews on the website of US retailer Best Buy.
Nokia’s Lumia 900 came out on top.
However, when asked the same question, the software no longer attempts to search Wolfram Alpha to find its answer, instead producing a default answer.
Nokia spokeswoman Tracey Postill told the Sydney Morning Herald: “Apple position Siri as the intelligent system that’s there to help, but clearly if they don’t like the answer, they override the software.”
However, Nokia said Tracey Postill’s comments were “lighthearted” and “taken out of context”.
“We were certainly flattered and honored,” Nokia spokesman Doug Dawson added.
