iOS 14.5 no longer defaults to female voice, English Siri adds two new voices

Apple released the iOS 14.5 beta 6 beta system. For the English system, Apple has brought several changes to Siri. Starting with iOS 14.5, Siri will no longer default to a female voice, and two other voice options will be added for users to choose from. These changes also apply to HomePod.

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Apple said the change is part of its commitment to diversity and inclusion:

“We’re excited to introduce two new Siri voices for English speakers, and to give Siri users the option to select their preferred voice when setting up their device. This is a continuation of Apple’s long-standing commitment to diversity and inclusion, and to products and services that are designed to better reflect the diversity of the world we live in.”

The report explains that the new voices are derived from real human recordings and then run through Apple's neural text-to-speech engine. But currently, in the beta system, only English has added new voices, and Chinese has not been added.

Starting from iOS 14.5, the system will prompt users to choose their own voice assistant during the first setup.

In addition, iOS 14.5 beta 6 also improves the Irish, Russian, and Italian Siri voices, upgrading them to neural text-to-speech. This means that 38 voices are now using this new technology. The report said: "Siri now handles 25 billion requests on 500 million devices and supports 21 languages ​​in 36 countries."