The female broadcaster and voice artist whose voice is used for Siri’s Hebrew dialect is suing Apple for using her voice without permission. Galit Gura-Eini has filed a lawsuit against Apple and has claimed that her voice has been used for saying racist, violent and sexual things.
Waze, a GPS navigation software app has used Galit’s voice for speaking directions. Like other Siri voices, Galit’s voice was recorded as a generic voice long before Apple launched Siri. Her voice was recorded in 2007 by a local branch of Nuance Communications, a company that offers speech recognition and artificial intelligence services.
As per the lawsuit filed by Galit Gura Eini, she allowed her recordings to be used only in “legitimate” purposes. Interestingly, she was unaware that her voice is used in Siri’s Hebrew dialect. She discovered it in 2016 when the dialect was launched.
She, then, asked Apple to remove her voice but the Cupertino giant refused her requests. The lawsuit says that the plaintiff’s voice has been turned “into a vehicle for improper and humiliating speech.”
According to Apple’s lawyer, the company is not at fault, and the voice recordings were possessed legally, and Galit does not have any rights over the recordings. A statement by Apple reads, “Her voice on the Siri app is nothing but syllables joined together by an algorithm.”
Galit has demanded $66,000 from Apple as the compensation in the lawsuit.
