A man, whose voice was used in the UK version of Apple's Siri voice-activated personal assistant, has spoken about his part in the feature even as he was asked by the company to keep it a secret.

Jon Briggs is behind some Jon Briggs used by the assistant found on the new iPhone 4S smartphone. Briggs had recorded his voice for Scansoft five years ago. Since the time, Scansoft ca been acquired by Nuance and changed its name and the technology has now been licensed to Apple.

"I did a set of recordings with Scansoft five or six years ago, for text-to-speech services," said Briggs while talking to a UK publication.

He said that it took three weeks to record five thousand sentences that are read in a very flat and a particular way. He said that then the team took out all the phonics separately so that the reader can read them clearly.

The voice recordings labeled as "Daniel" are the only licensed male voice response recordings in the country. Apple has asked him not to discuss his role in the feature but as he has not signed any contract for secrecy with the company, he has decided tog o public with his contribution.

He only realized that his voice was being used in Apple when he says a demonstration on TV. He commented that he likes Apple products and believes that Siri is a great feature.