-Any time I'm meeting someone new
it's always a big deal to people.
They're always amazed that there's an actual person
behind the voice.
There was one Halloween where a child came to the front door
and said, "all the neighbors say you're Siri."
And I said, "Yes I am."
And he said, "you don't sound like Siri."
And I said, (SIRI VOICE) "how about now."
Well I started off in this business
as a singer, a musician.
And this was many years ago, when they
used to do commercial jingles.
And they would have groups of people recording
in the studio at the same time.
And I was one of those lucky folks.
One day the voice talent didn't show up,
and the owner of the studio said, "Susan,
you don't have accent.
Come over here and read this copy."
And I thought, OK.
So I did that and I thought, well
this is something I can do.
So I got a voice coach, and an agent, and that was that.
First time I appeared as a machine, or representating
a machine, was Telly the all time teller for First
National Bank of Atlanta.
And it was at a time when ATMs were just being introduced,
and everyone was afraid to use them.
No one wanted to go get their money from a machine.
So they got me to sing the jingle as Telly the all
time teller.
(SINGSONG VOICE) I'm Telly the all time teller.
I work for First National Bank.
The vocabulary that ultimately became the original voice
of Siri was recorded in 2005, the whole of the July, 4
hours a day, five days a week.
And what we did was read hundreds
and hundreds of sentences and phrases,
that were created solely for sound.
Say fluff see ethyl today.
Say see ess fluster today.
And after the recordings were done,
technicians went in and extracted sounds.
And reformed new phrases and sentences.
And these are what ended up on the digital devices.
This process is called concatenation.
And the thing that made Siri, the original Siri, so iconic
is because she was the first concatenated voice
it sounded pretty human, and you could interact with her.
Previously all the concatenated voices sounded like, (ROBOT
VOICE) hello, how are you?
The original Siri was introduced on October 14, 2011,
and that's when I found out.
A fellow voice actor emailed me and said,
hey we're playing around with this new iPhone.
Isn't this you?
And I went, what?
And I went to the Apple site and checked it out and said,
yes that's me.
They changed all of the original Siri voices
with the OS7 system.
And many people can't tell the difference but of course to me
it is very obvious.
At this point in time because I have done
so much digital recording, and I don't know whether that's
a compliment or not, I ended up being
on a lot of different systems.
Now calling zone 1.
Thank you for flying Delta Airlines.
I was the voice of my son's bank in college.
So you could imagine how popular I was with him at that time.
I'm sorry, you are overdrawn.
I've been doing voice work and singing for decades.
Shall we say decades.
And I absolutely love it.
And I plan to do it as long as I possibly can.
(SIRI VOICE) I would like to say thank you to Oprah.
Thank you, Oprah.
Bye.