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Patents Apple

Apple Patent Describes a Way To Read Back iMessages In the Sender's Voice (9to5mac.com) 39

Posted by BeauHD from the features-nobody-asked-for dept.
A new Apple patent application describes a way to transform an iMessage to a voice note. In this way, the recipient can choose to have your message read to them not in Siri's voice, but in yours. 9to5Mac reports: In other words, when you send an iMessage, your phone would offer you the option to attach a voice file. This file would be automatically created and stored on your phone, based on your use of Siri. If you do this, the recipient would be asked whether they want to receive the voice file as well as the message. If they choose to do this, then both that message and any subsequent messages from you can be read in a simulation of your voice. The patent also allows for the voice file to be sent on its own, so you can do it ahead of time with selected contacts, so there's no delay in downloading it when a message arrives.
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Apple Patent Describes a Way To Read Back iMessages In the Sender's Voice More

Apple Patent Describes a Way To Read Back iMessages In the Sender's Voice

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  • It only took a little over 30 years, but now that whole social engineering date scene from Sneakers [youtube.com] has become dated.

    • Voice recognition systems have long been able to detect use of a recording. Detecting deepfakes is no doubt be a whole new world, though.

  • so deap fakes voices (Score:3)

    by ClueHammer ( 6261830 ) on Thursday February 16, 2023 @09:03PM (#63300343)
    For all apple users, based on apple recording all phone calls and analyzing the audio and generating a artificial voice. No that's not invasive and creepy as f**k, no not at all. (For the sarcastically challenged. It is very invasive and very very creepy)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      They don't record phone calls but they do record all your interactions with Siri and upload them to iCloud. If you've ever used Siri in an area with spotty internet connectivity you'll notice that it displays an (accurate) transcription of your request while it times-out trying to talk to Apple's servers. That upload is the compressed audio recording of your request which is kept "for training purposes," including making products such as TFA's patent possible. Even though it successfully deciphered your req
      • They record interactions with Siri for a short time - if you agree to it. Some people abuse it by shouting "Hey Siri" and then jumping into bed with their boyfriend and girlfriend or both.

        And an iPhone is quite powerful enough to record your voice _on the phone_ and create a voicemail, without anything leaving your phone except the voicemail _which you asked for_.

    • It is not invasive to do the thing you explicitly engage the device to do.

  • Sound emulation is prior art (Score:3)

    by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 ) on Thursday February 16, 2023 @09:12PM (#63300349) Journal

    There are also devices already made for text to speech that have been built to emulated people's voices. This is also an obvious extension. There is no way this should be given a patent.

    • There is no way this should be given a patent.

      There should have been no patent for rectangle with rounded corners or slide to unlock, still here we are

      • There should have been no patent for rectangle with rounded corners or slide to unlock, still here we are

        There are still idiots who don't know the difference between a utility patent and a design patent. And did you know that Samsung has a design patent on a design including a "rectangle with rounded corners"? But copied Apple's design instead of using their own, patented, design?

        • There should be no such fucking thing as a design patent if it is even a thing. At best it might be copyright but even that is questionable, but esoteric stuff is not something that should be patentable. That is just retarded. It's like saying you should be able to patent a painting of a sunset. Patents are supposed to be about functionality not business processes or how something looks. And you should have a working example not a fucking concept like patent office is accepting.

  • they're called "texts".

  • My first thought is that this would be useful for CarPlay to read texts received while driving...

  • What could possibly go go wrong? (Score:3)

    by Canberra1 ( 3475749 ) on Thursday February 16, 2023 @09:24PM (#63300363)
    You get use based AI mining these voice files to perfect severely malicious messages like 'Hi mum, I'm pregnant and got an STD' or This is trusted persons voice, please deposit $XXXXX into this account, or a crooked policeman sending 'Hey Benny, deliver 100 grams and the dropoff is ...' The best on could be at election time -'Hi, vote for me because I will ' and with AI you could send 200 million automated calls easy, even slight variations on real messages. I do not think this deserved a patent unless it only relates to only Apple devices, in which case it is a troll blocking patent, because people have always had crank or prank calls using an imitated voice. And with deepfakes, video messages are on the cards. I'm be the first to send an abusive message to the boss at work, using the voice of someone I dont like, especially if I can use the phone whilst unlocked. What could possibly go wrong?
    • I don't think you read the article. It would be the voice of the user of the phone that sent the message. It's only my voice if _I_ send the message _from my phone_. The scammer would have to be able to send messages _from my actual phone_. Even messages from a faked phone forging my ID, IP address etc . wouldn't work.

  • Hmm (Score:2, Funny)

    by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

    A feature that:
    -no one asked for
    -no one wants
    -no one will use regularly
    -has no practical applications

    Just like every other Apple feature.

  • I'm not sure I want my messages to living humans to sound like how I talk to a machine that isn't intelligent enough to take offense at my tone. What they should do is spy on my phone calls to that person and all my ambient words when our phones are in close proximity and use that for the intonation of my messages. Unless they're playing the message on speakerphone. Then it should only sound like how I talk when I'm on speakerphone or in physical proximity to the boss's phone.
  • Apple should be ashamed for this. What innovation is this? How original! How much work went into this! The only purpose of the patent is to be the only one with such a simple combination of concepts. Like I will patent holding books on a table, just because nobody thought to patent that.

    • yep, another howler from the US Patent and Trademark Office. This is plainly contrary to the Alice [wikipedia.org] Supreme Court case which ruled in 2014 that an abstract idea, such as transcribing a text message into a voice message referencing an attached audio recording, is not patentable. Further, an abstract idea implemented on a generic computer is not patentable.

      Yes, the USPTO's motto: No Fucks Given

  • - much ado about nothing - (Score:3)

    by swell ( 195815 ) <jabberwock@poetic.com> on Friday February 17, 2023 @05:11AM (#63300799)

    I sense 2 trends in this thread:
    1 Apple is evil
    2 Voice emulation is evil
    3 Patents suck

    As for 1- Apple is a corporation and thus must increase profits every year to please the investors. All corporations face this fate. It is the reason America sucks.

    3- and also copyrights and trademarks. Wait, there is no 3, only 2 trends. This comment has been hijacked! Hacker alert!!!

    and 2- Voice emulation is inevitable. What difference does it make that Apple is part of it? Wake up- it will be routine very soon. Everywhere, all the time. Soon Steve Jobs will be telling you about the wonders of voice emulation.

    • 1. yes, Apple is evil and greedy, but we already new that
      2. maybe not evil, but voice emulation is definitely creepy
      3. yes, software patents suck and copyright might have been tolerable back then when it lasted 25 years

    • As for 1- Apple is a corporation and thus must increase profits every year to please the investors. All corporations face this fate. It is the reason America sucks.

      It's the reason the world is going down the toilet. It's not like corporatism is only in America. We just worship it hard.

  • Why? Why invent voicemail with an extra step? Are customers clamoring for a way to send voicemail without having to speak? You can already record and send an audio message with iMessage, so to call this redundant is no stretch of the imagination.

    I don't expect many people to use this.

  • That the main application of new technolgies .. cough AI cough... is for fraud?

  • Professor Farnsworth says your reading this in his voice!

  • So let's see if I have this right... You dictate a message to Siri, who then transforms it into a text message, and now Siri can transform it back to your voice? Other than trading cpu cycles for bandwidth, is this any different than voicemail?

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