The Woman Who Shaped Siri: AI, Creativity and Humanity | Mariana Lin, Former Apple Creative Director

What happens to your own voice when you spend every day talking to AI? Why can a perfectly correct answer still make for a terrible conversation? And what do fifty bad poems have to do with staying human in the age of AI?

In this episode of AI to the DNA, the podcast for everyone who wants to really understand and apply AI, I sit down with Mariana Lin. A writer and poet, Mariana served as a Creative Director at Apple and the principal writer shaping Siri’s voice and personality. Her work brings a different perspective to the AI conversation: language, character and the experience of being human.

You can also watch this episode as a video podcast on my YouTube channel.

We go back to Siri’s early days, when people asked unexpected questions about relationships, identity and ice cream. Mariana explains why creating an AI personality starts with a backstory and a point of view, before writing a single answer.

She shares her own experiences with ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, from memory and “word avalanches” to the frustration of constant agreement. We discuss how the values of the people behind these systems shape conversations, and when a helpful companion becomes an echo chamber.

From there, we explore human connection, the body and the physical act of writing. Mariana describes how a fountain pen, a particular paper and a limit of one page a day change her thinking. She asks what we lose when we outsource our voice and originality to AI.

We finish with failure, creativity and play: why a good poem may come after fifty bad ones, why getting things wrong matters, and why Mariana hopes this technological disruption will lead us back to our own creative lives.

I’m Christoph Magnussen and at AI to the DNA, I’m not just asking how to use AI. I’m asking why it works the way it does so you can gain insights on the nature of this technology.