The Personal digital assistants on our phone like Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri have become popular and much improved over the past ten years. Whether in the car or strolling the streets of the city, no need to focus your gaze on the screen and two thumbs on the keyboard, just speak. It is fast, available 24 hours a day and accessible (for those suffering from illiteracy or visual impairment, for example). According to an article in “Le Télégramme” of May 26, 2022, the two trends of the future for personal digital assistants are the acceleration of conversational skills and a stronger personalization to bond with the user.
This personalization certainly allows the user to humanize, in a certain way, his digital assistant who follows them everywhere in their pocket, whom they ask to remind them of events or to call their parents, to find the closest coffee shop or simply to play their favorite DJ. Following its latest iOS 15.4 update on March 14, Apple added a neutral voice option to Siri, responding to an increasingly popular trend regarding gender diversity.
Here is a video to hear this voice:
This customization is not a surprise and reflects the updating of the emoji database which is also more and more inclusive. In the case of this neutral voice named “Quinn”, also a neutral name of Irish origin, Apple is increasing its representation with transgender, non-binary and the LGBTQ community in general. It is certainly a great novelty that encourages open-mindedness, but also a good marketing move. For now, this new voice only seems to be available in English. Question of personifying its tool even more, it will be interesting to see if Apple will apply this new feature to the diversity of languages in the future.
Hi Sebastien, you raised up an interesting topic. Could you imagine your favourite celebrity crush’s voice on the GPS? Well, Google Maps and many other companies are working on getting more celebrity’s voices on their voice list. I hope you could find a good voice while road tripping. Wouldn’t that be fun?
Oh yeah, that would be great on a GPS! For now, Gwyneth Paltrow reads to me my class readings on Speechify app. However, it is not free to have Gwyneth as a teacher. 🙂 https://vimeo.com/554282067
Sebastien,
When you spoke about this possibly being a marketing tool, I also thought the same thing. I am glad that Apple is thinking about representation more but I do remember how long it took them to simply create emoji’s with varying skin tones and hair colours and textures.