Siri may soon be able to detect your lip and head movements to activate. In any case, this is what a patent application filed by Apple suggests.
With iOS 17, users no longer need to say “Hey Siri” to activate Apple’s smart assistant. Indeed, a simple “Siri” is now enough. A small change certainly, but which marks the end of an era after 12 years of “Hey Siri” pronounced by billions.
But obviously, Apple still has other projects in mind for its assistant. Indeed, the Cupertino company would be working on a motion detection function for its voice assistant. In any case, this is revealed by a patent application filed by the Apple brand. In summary, the document reveals that Siri may soon be able to read lips of the user for trigger without voice command.
Siri could detect your lip movements to trigger
According to the Apple Insider site, this patent called “Keyword Detection Using Motion Sensing” therefore details a function for detecting movements of the lips, but also of the head, which could be used to activate the assistant. To do this, Siri would unsurprisingly exploit a motion sensor to track and record the user’s movements while speaking.
If the voice assistant judges that the user’s lip movements correspond to a specific command, it should execute it immediately. In the description, Apple explains that voice commands succeed sometimes to unwarranted triggers and erroneous responses, either because of background noise or the voice of another person nearby. The idea with this feature is to avoid these failures.
Also read: Apple – Siri will answer calls for you and help you during your conversations
Please note that this new activation method does not mean that Apple will permanently remove voice commands. On the other hand, we can imagine that users will have the choice of deactivating the microphone in favor of gesture detection to trigger Siri. For good reason, the manufacturer specifies that deactivating the microphone allows you to gain autonomy and save processing capacity.
It remains to be seen which Apple devices will be equipped with this feature. The iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch or the Apple Vision Pro are all designated. But again, this is a patent and nothing says that Apple will carry out its plan.
Source: Apple Insider