Enlarge / The back of the iPhone 13 mini. (credit: Samuel Axon)
There are already four American-accented English voices for Siri, but Apple will add a fifth in iOS 15.4. The new voice aims to provide a gender-neutral option for the first time, as reported by Axios.
The voice is labeled “Voice 5” in the Settings panel in the current beta release, though developer Steve Moser noted on Twitter that the voice is named “Quinn” under the hood. Apple confirmed to Axios that the voice is built from recordings by a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Moser also tweeted an example of what the new voice sounds like:
iOS 15.4 Beta 4 changes ?: Apple adds a 5th American Siri voice with filename ‘Quinn’ pic.twitter.com/HFQZV1oF0I
— Steve Moser (@SteveMoser) February 22, 2022
For most of the time since Siri first became a core iPhone feature back in 2011, a female voice was the default. That changed last year when Apple changed the iPhone setup to prompt the user to pick a male or female voice when first starting the iPhone, with no default choice selected.
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