there. From Mac OS X 10.7 to Mac OS X 10.10, a new implementation of the feature required software developers to implement a speech synthesis API into their applications. This prevented the clipboard from being overwritten, but also meant that, for applications that did not use the API, the feature would not function as expected, reading the title bar rather than the selected text. In macOS Sierra 10.12, Siri was introduced for the Mac, however, the voice was not available as a System Voice, which meant that the Siri voices could be only used in Siri. Siri was made available as a System voice in macOS Catalina 10.15, so that it would work for any text. The Siri voices work in a completely different way and the command remains unable to use Siri. In the macOS Big Sur 11.3 update, gender references to all voices were removed, coinciding with the change in Siri voices on iOS 14.5 and macOS 11.3 and later, as part of Apple's efforts to promote gender inclusivity. Speech recognition Apple hired many speech recognition researchers in 1990. After about a year, they demonstrated a technology codenamed Casper. It was released as part of the PlainTalk package in 1993. Although available for all PowerPC Macintoshes and AV 68k machines (it was one of the few applications that made use of the DSP in the Centris 660AV and Quadra 840AV), it was not part of the default system install prior to Mac OS X, requiring the user to perform a custom OS installation to get speech recognition capabilities. In Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and earlier, Apple's speech recognition was voice-command oriented only, i.e. not intended for dictation. It can be configured to listen for commands when a hot key is pressed, after being addressed with an activation phrase such as "Computer", or "Macintosh", or without prompt. A graphical status monitor, often in the form of an animated character, provides visual and textual feedback about listening status, available commands and actions. It can also communicate back with the user using speech synthesis. Early versions of the speech recognition provided full access to the menus. This support was later removed, since it required too many resources and made recognition less reliable, only to be re-added in Mac OS X 10.3 as a "universal access technology" called spoken user interface. The user can launch items located in a special folder,