While both Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant have featured multi-user support for months, Apple’s Siri, a voice-activated assistant released years before its key competitors, still doesn’t include the functionality.
However, it looks like that could soon change if a recently granted patent is an indication of what Apple is working on. The patent, entitled ‘User profiling for voice input,’ details technology that allows a device to identify multiple users though username and password or a biometric voice print.
This device would then be able to respond to that specific user’s commands based on past content preferences, resulting in Siri being much more accurate than the voice-activated assistant is currently when it comes to multi-users.
Shared devices like Apple’s HomePod, which currently doesn’t feature multi-user support, would be a good candidate for this technology. Currently, Apple’s HomePod will read the owner’s text messages and calendar entries out loud regardless of who is asking.
To be clear, this patent is broad and could just be referring to Apple’s current “Hey Siri,” support, which allows the voice-activated assistant to only respond to a specific user’s voice.
Still, given Apple’s HomePod lags behind its major competitors in a variety of ways — particularly when it comes to multi-user support — it makes sense that Apple is working on ways to improve the smart speaker.
Source: United States Patent and Trademark Office Via: Apple Insider
