“Apple is continuing to come up with ways to secure its devices while still making it as easy as possible to use, with one concept involving unlocking an iPhone or iPad and performing a Siri request, but only if the voice it hears matches that of its owner,” Malcolm Owen reports for AppleInsider.
“Granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday, the patent for ‘Device access using voice authentication’ is relatively straightforward, namely detecting the speaker’s voice for a vocal request and determining if it is the main registered user,” Owen reports. “According to the patent, a device capable to receive speech input from a user could conceivably create a ‘voice print’ for the owner, using multiple examples of their speech. This text-independent voice print would determine characteristics of the user’s voice to create a model, either on the device or via an external service, with the result being the point of comparison for future checks. ”
“This patent is one of a number Apple has filed in the field, and it certainly isn’t the first to surface from the company. For example, a 2011 patent application for “User Profiling for Voice Input Processing” suggests virtually the same idea as the newly-granted patent,” Owen reports. “In August, it was revealed Apple was looking into using voice prints for a slightly different purpose: differentiating between multiple users.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: One product in which such capability is sorely needed is HomePod, as anyone with a family and at least one of Apple’s semi-smart speakers can attest.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Years ago (pre-OS X), there was a period of time that you could log in to your Mac via voice but it was dropped (likely due to reliability issues).
Some store chain made a pretty interesting commercial based on the theme of voice patterns.
At the end it says “The simplest is often the best”
“My name is my passport. Verify me.”
I log into several different telephone banking and finance systems using the phrase “My voice is my password”. Against my expectations, it has worked reliably every time I’ve used it.
I would add that there are other security measures that have to be met at the same time before access is allowed.
Siri is the first thing to disable. Why expect it to understand voice patterns when it can’t even understand basic English most of the time, or any other language for that matter?
For the most part, Siri offers nothing more than a hotlink to Wikipedia. No need to waste more time expecting Apple to get it right now. Voice assistants are overhyped and underwhelming across the board, with Apple clearly in last place.
Understands my English almost perfectly these days, a massive improvement over a few years back. Can’t attest to other languages mind your claim however seems to be somewhat lacking in real evidence in that regard too. Recent reports suggest that Siri is pretty good at comprehension a little behind Google Assistent but better than any of the others including Alexa which hadn’t as far as I know garnered any great criticism of its comprehension of English. I would however agree about your ‘wiki’ comment Siri’s biggest weakness is the lack of servces it is wired into so that it is able to do more with the questions asked of it. Apple sat on its ass in that regard as per usual but will no doubt take a leap forward at some stage when it feels it can present it in a stage managed blaze of glory.
Will be awesome if it works.
In 1978 and 1979, I worked on a voice verification system at Texas Instruments. Much of the technology was derived from the Speak and Spell.