By Keith Brunson
She was born in Burlington, Vermont. The year was 1949. Her name is Susan Bennett. And through her fantastic singing voice, she could backup sing for Burt Bacharach. Then came Roy Orbison and, singing backup for him. And it was during those days music was really clicking for her. But Susan isn’t famous for backup singing. Susan is the original voice of Siri.
Voice actor Susan Bennett
But the engineers who developed the technology never told her what they were doing. The service went live on Oct 4, 2011. Susan was never paid past the original sessions. “I was auditioning without knowing I was auditioning.” The year was 2005, and Susan was brought in to record days upon days of just phrases by a company called ScanSoft.
Susan, while recording her “Siri” voice in the studio
She was paid for the voice over recordings and then forgot all about it. In 2011, suddenly, she heard herself on her iOS 7. And so did everyone else on planet Earth where English was spoken. But Susan knew nothing about it.
How could this happen? And who were the guys behind it all? Adam Cheyer, co-founder of Siri, Tom Gruber, and Dag Kittlaus were the people behind it all.
The people who launched Siri (from left to right) - Adam Cheyer, Tom Gruber, and Dag Kittlaus.
The project was highly complex, took two years, and involved a concept called concatenation. It uses a special computer code design that grabs this group of voice sounds and connects them to a different group of voice sounds to create a complete sentence. The invention was revolutionary. News of it spread like wildfire in Silicon Valley.
Enter Steve Jobs. The intense and imposing computer figure showed up in Adam’s office unannounced and demanded he be sold the Siri product. Adam declined, saying they just weren’t ready to sell. But Jobs, being Jobs, showed up again two months later. This time, he brought 200 million dollars with him. And this time, Adam did not say no.
Susan remained the voice of Siri until 2013, or two full years following the Jobs acquisition, but Susan never got paid a dime for her voice remaining as Siri. The corporate contention was Jobs bought a business from Adam Cheyer, Tom Gruber, and Dag Kittlaus. Susan Bennett was part of that purchase. Therefore, Jobs felt legitimately detached. In his mind, the voice was part of the business he bought. He felt he owed the “voice of the business” he bought nothing. And technically, he didn’t. But it still stung. Two hundred million times.
These days, Susan is the voice of Delta Airlines gates worldwide. She’s also the voice of numerous GPS and phone systems. And the Siri debacle has given Susan a new career as a public speaker nationwide and overseas. “I enjoyed being Siri,” Susan says. Her commercial work hasn’t stopped, and now in her 70s, Susan Bennett is a voice we will never forget. And money has nothing to do with it.
