The UK voice of Siri is revealed

He could become as famous as the faceless man who used to greet us with the message “You’ve got mail.”

The iconic male voice that became a symbol of America Online came from a person by the name of Elwood Edwards. You probably never knew that, but Jon Briggs might be a different story.

Briggs has come forward and revealed himself as the man who provided the voice of Apple’s iPhone 4S voice recognition platform Siri – but only for those who use the technology in the UK. There are different voices for US and UK users.

Siri has become a phenomenal sensation across the Web because not only does it seemingly recognize normal human speech and deliver relevant information in vocal interjections, but it does so with a sense of wit and humor that almost makes it feel like talking to a human.

Part of Siri’s success is that it does not sound like a “computer voice.” Instead, Briggs recorded a wide variety of voice samples for the technology that developers used to create the entire platform.

That was six years ago. Siri has been through a lot – it started out with a company called Scansoft, which later became Nuance, and which is now an effective part of Apple.

For Briggs, it was just a normal job. The voice-over artist didn’t even realize he was the voice of Siri until he heard it on a TV commercial.

As for the US voice, we still don’t know who’s responsible. It’s just unfortunate that movie trailer spokesman Don LaFontaine passed away, otherwise he would have been our first choice.