“Over the past 24 hours, we’ve seen a handful of reports talking about a new update to the speaking voice of Siri on HomePod in a few regions,” Mitchel Broussard reports for MacRumors.
“These reports are mostly located in the United Kingdom and Australia, and mention the British (Male and Female) and Australian (Male and Female) speaking voices for the assistant, specifically on Apple’s HomePod smart speaker,” Broussard reports. “MacRumors readers described the Australian Female and British Male voices as ‘more natural’ and ‘much clearer,’ and similar reports have emerged about other voices. Although there are many different descriptions for each voice, the consensus appears to be that the tweaks make Siri sound more human-like.”
“HomePod users can choose any Siri voice no matter the region they are located in, but as of now the vast majority of these reports appear to be located in the same regions as the voice they represent,” Broussard reports. “This may be the beginning of a wider rollout, but that’s still unclear at this point.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Aussie female Siri certainly sound a lot more natural:
So will the real #Siri please stand up. pic.twitter.com/8a8LCyarqI
— Callum (@callumjcoe) February 13, 2019
To change Siri’s voice on your HomePod:
1. Launch the Home app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
2. Long press or 3D touch on the HomePod icon
3. Tap Settings
4. Scroll down to Siri and choose Siri Voice
5. Tap Siri Voice to choose the desired accent and gender
You mean people are actually buying pricey homepods abroad. I don’t even want to know what they paid. 😲
Jolly good news, eh wot?
(apologies for any untoward cultural appropriation)
I dunno the Chinese are a bit touchy about these things.
At the time I think I paid $500 which was within a couple of percent of the US price in local currency plus GST.
I noticed the new female Siri voice on my HomePod this morning. Sounds a touch higher in pitch and felt a bit more conversational and flowed more naturally.
Simply revolutionary. Prices deserved to be raised. Next time, couple this with an emoji announcement and present at an Apple Announcement Event at Cupertino.
(Apple news increasingly is disproportionate…excitement about this kind of fluff when the hardware lineup erodes).
Interesting: Yesterday morning I asked Siri a question on my iPhone XS Max, only to hear her respond with an American voice/accent. The strange thing, at the time, was that I had been using a female British Siri for several months, If not longer. I did not initiate the change, and therefore had to reinstate the previous choice manually. Hmmmm. Stealth, indeed!