Apple's Greg Joswiak: Siri Wasn't Engineered to Be Trivial Pursuit

iOS 9 SiriIn iOS 11, Apple's AI-based personal assistant Siri has a much more natural voice that goes a long way towards making Siri sound human like. Siri speaks with a faster, smoother cadence with elongated syllables and pitch variation, a noticeable departure from the more machine like sound in iOS 10.

The team behind Siri, including Siri senior director Alex Acero, has worked for years to improve the way Siri speaks, according to a new interview Acero did alongside Apple VP of marketing Greg Joswiak with Wired. While Siri's voice recognition capabilities were powered by a third-party company early on in Siri's life, Acero's team took over Siri development a few years back, leading to several improvements to the personal assistant since then.

Siri is powered by deep learning and AI, technology that has much improved her speech recognition capabilities. According to Wired, Siri's raw voice recognition capabilities are now able to correctly identify 95 percent of users' speech, on par with rivals like Alexa and Cortana.

Apple is still working to overcome negative perceptions about Siri, and blames many of the early issues on the aforementioned third-party partnership.

"It was like running a race and, you know, somebody else was holding us back," says Greg Joswiak, Apple's VP of product marketing. Joswiak says Apple always had big plans for Siri, "this idea of an assistant you could talk to on your phone, and have it do these things for you in a more easy way," but the tech just wasn't good enough. "You know, garbage in, garbage out," he says.

Joswiak says Apple's aim from the beginning has been to make Siri a "get-s**t-done" machine. "We didn't engineer this thing to be Trivial Pursuit!" he told Wired. Apple wants Siri to serve as an automated friend that can help people do more.

siriwaveform
One unique Siri attribute is its ability to work in multiple languages. Siri supports English, French, Dutch, Mandarin, Cantonese, Finnish, Hebrew, Malay, Arabic, Italian, and Spanish, and more, including dialect variants (like English in the UK and Australia) and accents. The Siri team combines pre-existing databases of local speech with local voice talent and on-device dictation, transcribing and dissecting the content to find all of the individual sounds in a given language and all of the ways those sounds are pronounced.

In areas where Apple offers spoken dictation but no Siri support, it's gathering data for future Siri support, and in places where Siri is already available, spoken interactions between user and device (gathered anonymously) are used to improve algorithms and train the company's neural network.

Creating the right voice for Siri in a given language hinges on the proper voice talent, and Apple uses an "epic search" with hundreds of people to find someone who sounds helpful, friendly, spunky, and happy without overdoing it. Once the right person is found, Apple records them for weeks at a time to create the right sound. So far, Apple has repeated this process for all 21 languages Siri supports.

Ultimately, Acero and his Siri team are aiming to make Siri sound more like a trusted person than a robot, creating an attachment to the AI that will "make Siri great" even when Siri fails to answer a query properly. Apple also wants to make people more aware of what Siri can and can't do and that it exists in the first place, which is why iOS 11 includes Siri-centric features like cross-device syncing and a better understanding of user interests and preferences.

Wired's full piece, which goes into much more detail on how Siri recognizes various aspects of speech and how Apple chooses voice talent can be read over on the site.

Popular Stories

A18 Pro Chip

New MacBook With A18 Pro Chip Spotted in Apple Code

Monday June 30, 2025 8:05 am PDT by
Apple is developing a MacBook with the A18 Pro chip, according to findings in backend code uncovered by MacRumors. Earlier today, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported that Apple is planning to launch a low-cost MacBook powered by an iPhone chip. The machine is expected to feature a 13-inch display, the A18 Pro chip, and color options that include silver, blue, pink, and yellow. MacRumors...
iPhone 17 Pro Lower Logo Feature 1

iPhone 17 Pro Coming Soon With These 14 New Features

Monday June 30, 2025 1:08 pm PDT by
Apple's next-generation iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are less than three months away, and there are plenty of rumors about the devices. Apple is expected to launch the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max in September this year. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models:Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an...
iPhone Car Key WWDC 2025

Apple Announces 13 Automakers Planning to Offer iPhone Car Keys

Friday June 27, 2025 11:42 am PDT by
In 2020, Apple added a digital car key feature to its Wallet app, allowing users to lock, unlock, and start a compatible vehicle with an iPhone or Apple Watch. The feature is currently offered by select automakers, including Audi, BMW, Hyundai, Kia, Genesis, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, and a handful of others, and it is set to expand further. During its WWDC 2025 keynote, Apple said that 13...
maxresdefault

Five Features Coming to AirPods Pro 3

Friday June 27, 2025 10:52 am PDT by
Apple hasn't updated the AirPods Pro since 2022, and the earbuds are due for a refresh. We're counting on a new model this year, and we've seen several hints of new AirPods tucked away in Apple's code. Rumors suggest that Apple has some exciting new features planned that will make it worthwhile to upgrade to the latest model. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. Heal...
macbook air spacegray purple

Apple Planning to Launch Low-Cost MacBook Powered By iPhone Chip

Monday June 30, 2025 3:20 am PDT by
Apple is planning to launch a low-cost MacBook powered by an iPhone chip, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. In an article published on X, Kuo explained that the device will feature a 13-inch display and the A18 Pro chip, making it the first Mac powered by an iPhone chip. The A18 Pro chip debuted in the iPhone 16 Pro last year. To date, all Apple silicon Macs have contained M-series...
anker power bank recall

PSA: Anker Recalls Multiple Power Banks Due to Fire Risk

Friday June 27, 2025 4:16 pm PDT by
Popular accessory maker Anker this month launched two separate recalls for its power banks, some of which may be a fire risk. The first recall affects Anker PowerCore 10000 Power Banks sold between June 1, 2016 and December 31, 2022 in the United States. Anker says that these power banks have a "potential issue" with the battery inside, which can lead to overheating, melting of plastic...
Chase Sapphire Reserve Apple Perk Feature

Chase Sapphire Reserve Card Introduces New Perk for Apple Customers

Wednesday June 25, 2025 2:08 pm PDT by
Chase this week announced a series of new perks for its premium Sapphire Reserve credit card, and one of them is for a pair of Apple services. Specifically, the credit card now offers complimentary annual subscriptions to Apple TV+ and Apple Music, a value of up to $250 per year. If you are already paying for Apple TV+ and/or Apple Music directly through Apple, those subscriptions will...
replay all time playlist apple music

Apple Music Debuts All-New Personalized Playlist

Monday June 30, 2025 7:16 am PDT by
As part of its 10-year celebrations of Apple Music, Apple today released an all-new personalized playlist that collates your entire listening history. The playlist, called "Replay All Time," expands on Apple Music's existing Replay features. Previously, users could only see their top songs for each individual calendar year that they've been subscribed to Apple Music, but now, Replay All...
iPhone 17 Pro Blue Feature Tighter Crop

iPhone 17 Pro Launching in a Few Months With These 12 New Features

Thursday June 26, 2025 2:00 am PDT by
Apple's next-generation iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are around three months away, and there are plenty of rumors about the devices. Apple is expected to launch the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max in September this year. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models:Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an...

Top Rated Comments

duffman9000 Avatar
102 months ago
Yeah, it’s been garbage in and garbage out for years and now Apple wants us to forget that?
Score: 49 Votes (Like | Disagree)
falainber Avatar
102 months ago
Improving Siri's voice is a good thing but it's much lower on the priority list than making it smarter.
Score: 49 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Menopause Avatar
102 months ago
I would be glad if a dog barked at me in place of Siri's "natural voice" if it were 10% more intelligent than what Siri is today. The most pathetic piece of crap ever maintained by Apple.



Score: 39 Votes (Like | Disagree)
nope7308 Avatar
102 months ago
Siri is the result of believing your own hype. I'll just leave it at that.
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
desmond2046 Avatar
102 months ago
Whenever my friends tell me how scary AI is and how it is going to destroy the human beings, I tell them to try Siri.
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
AngerDanger Avatar
102 months ago
Apple wants Siri to serve as an automated friend that can help people do more.
Mission accomplished. I can't count how many times I've been chillin' with my friends and having a personal discussion, which tends to go a bit like:

"I get the strangest feeling Steve is just using Sharon as a sort of ego boost. You know what I mean?"

"I don't know what 'I get the strangest feeling Steve is just using Sharon as a sort of ego boost. You know what I mean?' means, but I can search the web for it."

Ahaha, we're such nutters!
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)