Siri voice in Germany gets a quality boost thanks to machine learning
Siri in Germany has finally received upgraded voices almost three years after the English voices were significantly improved when iOS 11 launched in 2017.
German site iphone-ticker.de reported Wednesday that some German-language users have noticed that Siri’s voice has improved considerably on their devices and is now more melodic and natural, especially on HomePod.
Some people say that Siri “sounds like helium” after the update, but AppleInsider has a pretty good idea why that appears to be happening.
There are cases where Siri’s voice will revert from the now human-sounding normal to a more robotic one, and this may be what’s happening for these users. It happens when your iPhone or iPad is particularly low on space and the device offloads the richer Siri voice.
Before, more natural sounding Siri voices were limited to English-language users.
Apple first announced that Siri would sound significantly more human in the future at the WWDC back in 2017, but it looks like it took them more than three years to make true on that promise for its German-language fans.
“We’re making a big upgrade to your primary interface in dealing with Siri, and that’s Siri’s voice,” Apple’s software engineering chief Craig Federighi said during the WWDC 2017 keynote. “We’ve used deep learning now to create a really natural and expressive voice for Siri.”
You can watch that segment embedded below (the fun part starts at 55:40)
That’s why Siri’s pronunciation now sounds more natural than back when Apple was using audio clips from voice actors, particularly when speaking longer phrases such as when reading the news or answering knowledge questions. Modern-day Siri is also much better at stressing syllables accurately than the older version, and that’s especially true when she pronounces complicated words and constructs longer sentences.
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2020/04/29/siri-voice-germany-upgrade/
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