Voice commands on iPhone?

Apple may be seeking to introduce voice recognition as a standard option with iPhones, iPods or even the Apple TV, a new patent application suggests. Published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office, the filing concentrates on the concept of an iPhone supporting the technology, but notes that it could be applied to other devices as well. They key addition to Apple's hardware would be the presence of a "voice-to-command analyzer," which would determine whether audio is meaningless or represents an action request. This would save other processors the burden of deciphering speech.

After an initial sorting, recognized commands would trigger a macro manager, executing actions from a predetermined library. Some suggested commands could include "play irreplaceable," where "irreplaceable" would be the name of either a song or a playlist. Voices could also simply trigger the name of a menu or other context-sensitive command, such as "tell" within a calendar app, which could be used to message all of the listed contacts for an event.

More iPhone-specific commands might involve controlling the camera, or choosing how to deal with voicemail or incoming calls. On devices similar to an Apple TV, users might have to make use of a separate microphone, such as that on a headset; this could however be used to pass commands along to another portable device, with a speaker included somewhere in the pathway to provide feedback.

Notably, unofficial voice recognition is already provided on the iPhone, by apps such as Vocalia.

by MacNN Staff