Oliver Haslam·

New Apple Patent Details Multiple-User Support For Siri

When Apple launched the HomePod, its entry into the smart speaker market, it was severely lacking in many ways including such simple features as being able to set multiple timers. That’s a feature that it is still sorely lacking but is expected to receive next month, but there are yet more features that are believed to be on the way. One of those is support for multiple users, something that may be possible thanks to a recently discovered patent.

A newly granted patent would make it possible for Apple to use voice recognition in order to identify which user is speaking based on how they sound. This would then allow Apple to tailor the HomePod’s response based on the information at hand.

As things stand right now, Siri does not appreciate that homes include more than one user. This works fine for smartphones and to some extent, tablets, but when a smart speaker is expected to be used by everyone in the home, multi-user support is something that should be on offer.

According to this new patent, Siri could create a whole library of words based on learning accrued from a user’s individual speech patterns as well as how they interact with the speaker as a whole. This would then allow it to make decisions and offer experiences based on the user it believes is speaking with it.

Of course, as is always the case with these things, it’s important to remember that Apple patents do not always mean a feature or product is in the pipeline. That being said, multi-user support for HomePod makes more sense than most patents that we have come across and at this point, it is surely a question of when it goes live, rather than whether it will.

(Source: USPTO)

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