Voice of Siri Karen Jacobsen releases new album with ode to Hayman Island

The Queensland-born Aussie voice of Apple’s Siri digital assistant has a new project – and it involves promoting the Sunshine State.

Siri has a new destination.

Queenslander Karen Jacobsen, the Australian voice of Apple Inc’s AI digital assistant Siri, has just recorded a new album, where she yearns to return to Hayman Island.

While Siri gave her global fame, Jacobsen has been a musical performer her whole life, with Ready For What I Came Here For marking her 10th studio album.

Born in Mackay, Jacobsen spent much of her adult life carving out a career in New York before the coronavirus struck.

She brought her husband and American-born son to Queensland to ride out the pandemic, before deciding to settle long-term in the Whitsundays.

Australia's Voice of Siri Karen Jacobsen who has come home to the Whitsundays from New York. Photo Lachie Millard

The album’s signature song, Take Me to Hayman Island, was written during lockdown last year, inspired by Jacobsen’s childhood memories of the Whitsunday island paradise.

“We were in lockdown at my parents’ place at Toowoomba and there was this real desire to be somewhere peaceful and beautiful,” she said.

“And I thought where would I want to go if I could go anywhere?

“And I thought of Hayman Island which held so many wonderful and vivid memories for me from my own childhood.”

Jacobsen has enjoyed the relaxed pace of Airlie Beach compared to the frenzy of New York, but it hasn’t all been a holiday.

She is still doing voiceover work and recently fronted a tourism campaign as an ambassador for Whitsundays Destination.