The idea of whispering is so that you can tell somebody something without everyone else around you hearing what’s being said. So imagine if you were to whisper to your friend, and then they blurt it out loud in front of everyone, how embarrassing would that be? Unfortunately our digital assistants aren’t schooled on social etiquette, but that’s something Apple wants to fix.
According to a patent that was recently discovered by Gizmodo (via 9to5Mac), it seems that Apple has patented an idea on how to make Siri more discreet with its replies. Basically the patent describes a situation where if you were to whisper your command to Siri, Siri would be able to detect that you’re whispering and provide a whispered response in return.
This could be handy in all kinds of situations, where if you’re in a meeting and you want to use Siri to send a reply, or if you’re in an environment where you can’t speak out loud like a library, or if in general you’d rather just not have anyone hear what you’re saying. However there are some issues with such a system, where being able to whisper could also mean more sensitive information could be shared with Siri.
That being said while it is an interesting idea, we have to wonder how applicable it could be. As 9to5Mac points out, as it stands sometimes digital assistants already have a hard time understanding us, let alone being able to differentiate a whisper, but then again this is a patent so whether or not it’ll actually be implemented remains to be seen.