Meet The Voice Behind "Daniel," Siri's British-Voiced Personal Assistant?

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Former technology journalist, TV presenter and voice actor Jon Briggs has revealed himself to be the serious-sounding British-accented voice behind the UK English version of Siri, despite Apple’s efforts to keep him silent about it. Say hello to Daniel.

Despite being a voice actor, Jon Briggs never expected his talent to be used in what can be considered the most popular feature of Apple’s latest iPhone release. With the speech-powered personal assistant being one of the top reasons smartphone users are switching to the iPhone 4S, it’s only a matter of time before people become curious about that almost-human voice Siri has, in lieu of artificial-sounding speech that other technologies have.

iPhone 4S users who have their phone’s language switched to English (United Kingdom) will get “Daniel” as their personal assistant. Daniel speaks with a British accent,  which some users say to be in a cold and very serious tone. “Daniel” turns out to be the voice of Jon Briggs, who recorded a set of 5,000 sentences in a span of three weeks in 2005. He only recognized his work in Siri when a recent  TV commercial showcased the capabilities of the iPhone 4S.

Briggs said that Apple’s PR department tried to warn him against revealing his identity, as the company bans employees from speaking about its technologies and products without authorization. But Briggs never got into any contract with Apple. These recordings were actually made for a company called Scansoft six years ago, which was then merged with Nuance Technologies, which ended up being involved in developing Siri.

Briggs shares how his voice had been broken down into parts and phonics, saying the text-to-speech company he worked for would “go and take away all the phonics apart, because I have to be able to read anything you want, even if I’ve never actually recorded all those words.”

Apart from being your personal assistant, Briggs has also voiced-over for BBC’s The Weakest Link and the announcements at London’s King’s Cross station. But with the popularity of the iPhone 4S, Briggs has found himself a new audience of tens of millions of iPhone 4S users in the UK.