iOS 19 Will Clone Your Voice in Only One Minute

There are a bunch of awesome new accessibility features coming to the iPhone in iOS 19 later this year, including a significant update to Apple’s Personal Voice feature that was initially introduced in 2023 with iOS 17.

Personal Voice enables users to create a synthesized voice that sounds like their own to facilitate communication. It can be used to type-to-speak in FaceTime and on phone calls, in other apps, and even during in-person conversations. It’s a remarkable solution for those who are losing their voice or struggle with speaking. To date, creating a personal voice has not been easy and has required some time and effort. That’s all about to change with iOS 19.

This Limited-Time Microsoft Office Deal Gets You Lifetime Access for Just $39

Sick and tired of subscriptions? Get a lifetime license for Microsoft Office Home and Business 2021 at a great price!

Currently, creating a Personal Voice involves reading a series of 150 randomly chosen text prompts, which takes about 15 minutes. Those recordings are then processed overnight while your iPhone is charging (and connected to Wi-Fi).

In our initial testing, it took a day or two to fully build the voice profile, and it sounded a bit robotic. However, it appears that this will improve later this year. According to a press release from Apple, iOS 19 will utilize artificial intelligence and on-device machine learning to “create a smoother, more natural-sounding voice in under a minute, using only 10 recorded phrases.” Wow!

This is great news for anyone needing to utilize Personal Voice and the Live Speech assisted communication feature. Reading dozens of prompts for Personal Voice to record 15 minutes of audio may not seem like too much of a burden, but it certainly can be if you have a speech impairment, other disability, or health issue that makes speaking difficult. Apple’s news today will make this Accessibility Feature even more accessible!

If you’d like to give Personal Voice a spin on your iPhone or iPad ahead of iOS 19, here’s how:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Scroll down and choose Accessibility.
3. Select Personal Voice.
4. Tap Create a Personal Voice.
5. Use Face ID or Touch ID to unlock this feature.
6. Follow the instructions on the screen.
7. If you need to pause your recording, tap Done. Your progress will be saved.
8. You can resume recording by going to Settings > Accessibility > Personal Voice and then tap the Personal Voice you wish to continue creating.

We are aware that AI raises concerns regarding privacy and security. Just like iMessage, Personal Voice is encrypted and stored on your device. Only the user can access it with Face ID, Touch ID, or a passcode. You can share your Personal Voice across devices, including your Mac, via iCloud. This is end-to-end encrypted as well. Will the ease of getting Personal Voice started in iOS 19 lead to it becoming more widely used? We’ll see!