Until recently, the default voice for Apple’s Siri assistant has been stereotypically female-sounding. However, studies have found that having AI assistants default to female-sounding voices can reinforce harmful stereotypes, so Apple has tried to fix that in its upcoming iOS 14.5, which is now in beta.
When you update your phone to iOS 14.5, you’ll be prompted to pick a default voice for Siri — and Apple is including two new voice options. However, if you’ve changed your mind and want to use a different voice (or are using the 14.5 beta and weren’t prompted), this guide will show you how to change the voice after setup.
It’s a reasonably simple process. First, go to the Settings app, then to Siri & Search, and tap Siri Voice. There, you’ll be presented with the list of options.
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At the moment, the American variety is the only one with four voice choices; Australian, British, Indian, Irish, and South African versions only have two. The four US voice choices are:
- Voice 1, which is a soft-spoken male-sounding voice
- Voice 2, an energetic, confident female-sounding voice
- Voice 3 is similar to Voice 2 but male-sounding
- And finally, Voice 4, which is similar to the default Siri voice that’s been around all these years
If you want to hear what the voices sound like for yourself, they’re in the embedded tweet below.
Tapping on a voice will play a snippet of it saying “Hi, I’m Siri. Choose the voice you’d like me to use.” If you choose voices 1–3, it will have to download them before you can use them, but you don’t have to stay in the Settings app while it does so. Once it’s finished downloading, Siri will respond with your chosen voice.
This process is unlikely to change in the final version, but if it does, we’ll be sure to update this how-to.
