The British voiceover artist who provided the male voice for Siri only discovered he had been included in the iPhone 4S after seeing it demonstrated on TV — and was then asked not to talk about it by Apple’s PR people.
Jon Briggs is the man in question. He was completely unaware of his involvement in Siri, as the spoken lines used by Apple in the product — over 5000 of them — were recorded separately around six years ago. Apple just bought them from an agency.
That’s all pretty standard business so far, but it all gets a little odd after the launch of iPhone 4S and its Siri feature, when Briggs received a call from an “Apple representative” who asked him not to talk about his role in the product.
The Apple employee said Apple is “not about one person” and requested Briggs stay quiet about his role, as Apple employees are not allowed to talk about their involvement in product development. But Jon didn’t and doesn’t work for Apple so, in his familiar and characteristic manner, he laughed and went and did an interview with the Telegraph about it.
If you’d like to hear “Siri” used in another environment, the same set of dialogue from Jon is also used for the passenger announcements at London’s King’s Cross Station, plus he’s also on quite a few satnavs, and is the man who fills us in on the scoring stats on the British TV show The Weakest Link. [Telegraph via TNW via Gizmodo UK — Thanks Darrell!]