After 15 minutes of training, your iPhone will soon be able to mimic your speech

With just 15 minutes of training, Apple on Tuesday unveiled several new accessibility features for the iPhone and iPad, one of which is a feature that mimics a user's voice during phone conversations.

Users will be able to read text prompts to capture audio and have the technology recognize their voice using an upcoming tool called Personal Voice. The "synthesized voice" will then be used by a similar function called Live Speech to read the user's typed text aloud during phone calls, FaceTime chats, and in-person talks. Additionally, users will be able to store frequently used words and phrases for usage in real-time chats.

The feature is one of many designed to increase the accessibility of Apple products for users with hearing, vision, cognitive, and mobility impairments. According to Apple, those who may suffer long-term voice loss due to illnesses like ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) would most benefit from the tools.

Sarah Harlingen, senior director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives at Apple, stated on the official blog that "accessibility is part of everything we do at Apple." "To support a diverse set of users and help people connect in new ways, these ground-breaking features were designed with feedback from members of disability communities at every step of the way."

The additions will launch later this year, according to Apple. Although there may be a legitimate need for these tools, their release coincides with concerns about dishonest actors taking advantage of artificial intelligence breakthroughs to create convincing fake audio and video, or "deep fakes," to deceive or mislead the public.

Apple said in the blog post that "on-device machine learning is used by the Personal Voice feature to keep users' information private and secure."

Other IT firms have dabbled in voice recognition using AI. Amazon announced last year that it was updating its Alexa system to make it capable of mimicking the voice of any speaker, including a family member who has passed away. The feature is still pending release.

Apart from the voice functionalities, Apple also unveiled Assistive Access, an app that unifies some of the most widely used iOS applications, including FaceTime, Messages, Camera, Photos, Music, and Phone, into a single Calls app. For those who might prefer visual or auditory conversations, the interface has large text labels, high-contrast buttons, an emoji-only keyboard option, and a video message recording feature.

Additionally, Apple is upgrading the Magnifier app for those who are blind. To improve user interaction with tangible things, it will now have a detection mode. The update would enable users to, for instance, position an iPhone camera in front of a microwave and trace over the keypad with their finger as the app reads aloud the text on the microwave's buttons and labels them.