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Siri to get extra character, wordplay, as Apple is hiring

Apple is advertising for someone to imbue more personality into the voice-activated Siri personal assistant feature.

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Richard Trenholm Former Movie and TV Senior Editor
Richard Trenholm was CNET's film and TV editor, covering the big screen, small screen and streaming. A member of the Film Critic's Circle, he's covered technology and culture from London's tech scene to Europe's refugee camps to the Sundance film festival.
Expertise Films, TV, Movies, Television, Technology
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Richard Trenholm
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Could you put words in Siri's mouth? Apple is advertising for someone to imbue more personality into the voice-activated question-answerer built into the iPhone 5.

In the ad spotted by 9to5Mac, Apple is looking for "someone who combines a love for language, wordplay, and conversation with demonstrated experience in bringing creative content to life within an intense technical environment", in order to develop Siri "as a distinct, recognizable character".

That's great and all, and I'm sure we've chortled at all the little funnies that Siri drops when you ask silly questions. But personally I'd rather Apple focused on making Siri actually work rather than giving it a nice turn of phrase.

The voice-controlled personal assistant, as advertised by Martin Scorsese and Zooey Deschanel, relies on Yelp for local search. Now I'll admit to not using Siri much lately, so it may have improved, but in our experience, Siri all too often just searched the Web to find the information we need, and we found ourselves rarely using it.

Siri began taking questions on the iPhone 4S in 2011. Siri has certainly met with mixed reactions -- even Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak criticised it -- with some customers so disappointed by the performance of the voice-controlled doohickey that they resorted to legal action.

Do you use Siri? What's the funniest thing it's ever said to you? Is Siri an indispensable personal assistant or underwhelming gimmick? Tell me your thoughts in the comments or on our Facebook page.