Siri, the iPhone’s super sassy personal assistant, has some hilarious bite to her, doesn’t she? It wasn’t always like this! According to WSJ, Siri started with a “light attitude” until Apple bought it and then purposely gave it more of an edge.
Norman Winarsky, a co-founder of Siri before Apple’s purchase, says his original team had many conversations about “whether it should be gender-neutral or should have an attitude”. They decided to go with a voice that occasionally had a “light attitude”. When Apple got their hands on Siri though, Apple wanted more edge, a realness that wasn’t vanilla. Yes, they wanted to keep Siri “friendly and humble” but they were more concerned with “how would we want a person to respond?”
[WSJ, Image Credit: Shit That Siri Says]