SRI International
In December 2007, SRI launched a spin-off company, Siri Inc., which Apple acquired in April 2010. In October 2011, Apple announced the Siri personal assistant as an integrated feature of the Apple iPhone 4S. Siri's technology was born from SRI's work on the DARPA-funded CALO project, described by SRI as the largest artificial intelligence project ever launched. Siri was co-founded in December 2007 by Dag Kittlaus (CEO), Adam Cheyer (vice president, engineering), and Tom Gruber (CTO/vice president, design), together with Norman Winarsky (vice president of SRI Ventures). Investors included Menlo Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures.
Siri
The original American voice of Siri was provided in July 2005 by Susan Bennett, unaware that it would eventually be used for the voice assistant. A report from "The Verge" in September 2013 about voice actors, their work, and machine learning developments, made hints that Allison Dufty was the voice behind Siri, though this was disproven when Dufty wrote on her website that she was "absolutely, positively "not" the voice of Siri." Citing growing pressure, Bennett revealed her role as Siri in October, and her claim was proven by Ed Primeau, an American audio forensics expert. Apple has never confirmed the information.