Matthew Panzarino, 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.
This is part of iOS 14.5, beta 6.
Great move on Apple’s part to make the choice of voice part of the onboarding process. No more defaulting to a female voice.
Want to hear the new voices? Play the video in Gruber’s tweet below:
Here’s a recording of Siri’s new lineup of American voices in iOS 14.5. Voices 1 and 4 are the existing ones, voices 2 and 3 are the new ones. pic.twitter.com/6emei4B3Z9
— John Gruber (@gruber) April 1, 2021