Feeling not very supercalifragilisticexpialidocious about this
If your iPhone sounded exactly like you, what would you make it say? That was my first question when personal voice started working with the iOS 17 beta on my iPhone 14 Pro. Could I put this to practical use, or would this be more useful for practical jokes? The technology behind personal voice is no joke, and even though it wasn’t good enough to fool my friends, it’s clear where this technology is headed, though it’s not clear the consequences when we get there.
Personal voice, one of the most powerful and fascinating features of iOS 17, is now active and ready to try, though it isn’t for everyone, and I mean that sincerely. If you’re wondering why you might need the iPhone to speak with your voice, Personal Voice is an accessibility feature. It is meant to offer more speech options to people who have trouble speaking or are losing their voice through illness or injury, for instance.
If you have been diagnosed with, for instance, Multiple Sclerosis or Cerebral Palsy, or any of the myriad physical conditions for which an augmentative communication device could help, personal voice could be a useful solution. Right now, alternative speech devices are specialized and cost hundreds of dollars, and no consumer device gives you speech that sounds like your own voice. If you are still able to record your own speech through the setup process, personal voice could be a way to communicate in a way that sounds more like you.
You can read about the personal voice setup process, and once you’ve gone through the long procedure, you can use your own voice as the main voice of your iPhone. You can also write phrases that your iPhone can speak and sound almost exactly like you, in tone if not inflection.
Of course, in these dawning days of deep fakes and generative AI, it’s fair to be concerned about the ability to duplicate and fake someone’s voice using only an iPhone. For now, this is still a beta feature, and it is hidden deep within the Accessibility menu, so it’s too soon to guess at all the ways this might be used.It’s too soon to worry about Personal Voice on iOS 17
It would be terrible if the worrywarts and naysayers ruined this amazing opportunity for accessibility on the iPhone.
