iOS 14.5 and Siri: no more female voice by default (and other improvements)

In iOS 14.5 Beta 6,several changes have been noticed. Siri has benefited from various notable improvements, including some very important onesconcerning gender equality, but also the question of sexual identity and language variations.

Voice and sex assistant: Apple takes the lead

First, with iOS 14.5, Siri is no longerno longer configured with a female voice by default. When initializing iOS on an iPhone or iPad, a new option offers to choose between different voices, some female and others male.

The reason here is very simple. Requiring a basic female voice for a voice assistant goes against the fight for equal rights for all that Apple (and many others) are leading.

Why should an assistant, in any form, be represented by a woman's voice? Apple has in any case indicated its position with this new setting option, which is, in my opinion, to be welcomed and taken as an example from competing assistants.

And then, apart from the substantive subject, it is always better to give the user the possibility of deciding which voice they want to hear from the start, without having to make the change later.

No more gender or accent to choose from, but one voice style and variety

Second, in Siri settings,Settings > Siri & Search > Siri Voice, under iOS 14.5, it is notno longer possible to choose the gender of Siri's voice or the accent. These two options are now called “Voice” and “Variety” respectively.

So, instead of having to choose the gender of Siri's voice, the user must choose betweenseveral numbered voice suggestions(Voice number 1 or voice number 2 for French). For other languages there are more choices, 4 for example for US English.

In the same way, no more choice of accent, but a choice of variety, two for French from France: Canada and France. Here too, for other languages, the choice is richer. For example, there are 6 different varieties of American English.

On the one hand, this makes it possible to remove the notion of gender in the voice, which seems to reflect a more open vision than that of the simple sexual binary. On the other hand, the abandonment of the term “Accent” shows, in my opinion, greater respect for different language variations. Very often, talking about an accent is very simplistic when mentioning a variation of a language. For example, the French spoken in Canada is obviously not just French with a Quebec accent. Quebec French has its own history, its own expressions and words that are not found in French French.

What do you think of these improvements for Siri?