Wednesday, 26 June 2013
iOS 7 Siri will learn your name
In iOS 7 it seems that Siri, Apple’s personal assistant, will take more time to learn how to pronounce names correctly.
Discovered in the iOS 7 beta by a developer, Siri will now ask for users’ help to pronounce names and learn the correct pronunciation.
When Siri was introduced in iOS 5 with the iPhone 4S, many users discovered that Apple’s voice recognition software struggled to pronounce many names. Users couldn’t do anything to assist Siri except change contact names to phonetic spellings.
However, one 9to5Mac reader and iOS developer discovered that Siri for iOS 7 can now learn how to say names. If it has trouble understanding a name, Siri will ask the user to teach it how to say it and undergo a learning process.
Also, iOS 7 users will be able to say “That’s not how you pronounce [insert name here]” to initiate that same learning process with Siri.
When the user informs Siri of the correct pronunciation, the iOS 7 update will allow Siri to offer back a few options as to what the correct pronunciation is. The user can then choose one of those options and Siri will save it and attempt to revert to that option from then on.
Also discovered in the iOS 7 beta for Siri are improved commands, such as asking Siri to turn on the LED flashlight.
These new iOS 7 Siri features were discovered in the first edition of the iOS 7 beta. However, Apple will be releasing iOS 7 beta 2 later today, according to American network providers.
The Apple Developer portal should also get access to the beta update as well, so expect to see a flurry of new features discovered soon.
iOS 7 was officially unveiled during the WWDC keynote this month, revealing the first major redesign overhaul for Apple’s mobile OS since the original iPhone.
Due for an autumn iOS 7 release date, the updated mobile OS will launch alongside the new OS X Mavericks for Mac devices.
