New Apple Patent Wants Siri to be Able to Search your iOS Device Photos

[RaduTyrsina]

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A new Apple patent uncovered by the AppleInsider publication details a new interesting functionality that Siri could get in the future. According to the filing, Siri could search and tag photos from your iPhone or iPad by using natural speech input. The patent filing is entitled “Voice-Based Image Tagging and Searching†and is described like this on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website:

The electronic device with one or more processors and memory provides a digital photograph of a real-world scene. The electronic device provides a natural language text string corresponding to a speech input associated with the digital photograph. The electronic device performs natural language processing on the text string to identify one or more terms associated with an entity, an activity, or a location. The electronic device tags the digital photograph with the one or more terms and their associated entity, activity, or location.

Along with the introduction of iOS 7, Apple has started automatically sorting users’ iPhone photos based on time taken and location. Now, this patent takes it further, by letting Siri recognize the assigned tags on the people, locations or activity taking place in the photograph.

For example, if you will take a picture and will annotate the following: “this is me at the beachâ€, Siri would be able to understand and tag the photo with the relevant information. Then, in order to retrieve the stored images, all you’d then need to do is to say â€show me photos of me at the beachâ€. Siri will then supposedly fetch the pictures that interest you.

The application was filed by Apple with the USPTO in March of this year and is credited to Jan Erik Solem and Thijs Willem Stalenhoef.

Source: AppleInsider, iPhoneForums