Suped-up iPhone voice controls have been strongly rumoured ever since Apple snapped up Siri, a voice-controlled assistant app with more than a smidgeon of artificial intelligence, in April 2010.
Now those whispers have got a little more solid with a leak that suggests Apple is planning to bake Siri and voice-recognition smarts from Nuance into an iOS 5 feature called Assistant. It looks like the iPhone 5 could put some PAs out of a job…
9to5Mac received a screenshot showing a setting for the feature which is not present in the current iOS 5 beta and claims its own investigation of the SDK reveal references to it lurking in code.
If the rumour is right, Assistant will not only use voice input but also scan your device for information including location, contact information and music metadata to give you the best personalised suggestions.
The report also suggests that Apple will give users the option to securely send their speech data back to be analysed in order to improve the system’s effectiveness. It already takes a similar approach with the iTunes and App Store Genius function.
As well as taking voice inputs, the Assistant feature is said to talk back to you using the same Nuance synthesised voices present in Mac OS X Lion. Check out the Siri demo below to get a sense of how the iOS 5 Assistant feature could work:
Are you excited about the prospect of having a virtual PA primed and ready in iOS 5? Let us know how what voice control features you’d like to see Apple add to iOS 5.
