Your iPhone might soon be able to read iMessages in your friend’s voice

Apple has applied for a new patent that would allow iMessages to be read in the sender’s voice. And no, this is not Siri reading the message or a straight-up voice note. This is your phone reading the written words as it thinks they would sound and be said by the person writing them. (via PatentlyApple)For those of you who have used a VoIP service, this might remind you a bit of the Voicemail transcription some of those apps have, albeit working somewhat backward, as it is words being turned into audio and not the other way around.

As we already established, this would be nothing new practicality-wise, since Siri can already read out loud messages to you whenever you find it convenient. If this feature does end up reaching real implementation in Apple’s devices, it would serve more as a fun extension that would bring personality to iMessages, which might sound superficial, but these little details tend to be quite liked by most users.

How would iMessage to voice note work?

Whenever one side sends a message via the iMessage app to another person who owns an iPhone, the phone would ask if they would like to attach a voice file. What is this voice file you ask? Well, the good news is that you don’t actually have to manually train some kind of voice model because you have already been doing that by talking to Siri.By using all that it has heard you speak, Siri would have already created and stored the file on your phone. Once you send that voice file, on the opposite side the recipient would get to choose whether they want to receive just your message or the file with it as well. If they decide to accept both, then going forward your messages will be read with a simulation of your voice, instead of Siri’s.

Keep in mind that this is a just a patent, so there is no certainty about the feature reaching actual implementation in the future. That said, it is easy to imagine, as it just seems like something Apple wouldn’t skip on.