Since iOS 18, Siri now responds to other people’s voice.
I tried disabling and reenabling Siri (resetting) but the issue persists.
Looks like I am not alone: Why does Siri respond to voices other tha… - Apple Community
iPhone 13 Pro
Mac Jim ID wrote:
braincoke wrote:
You have already posted the research paper, but seem to miss the point of the keyword "Research• ". You will find many topics of research if you simply go to the main site that discusses many research topics.
https://machinelearning.apple.com/research•
After reviewing all those research topics, you may have a better understanding that they are not saying these are currently implemented features. Could these topics become features? Possibly.
As has already been pointed out, there is one device that implements a feature to identify the person and that is the HomePod. Since the HomePod does not have any FaceID/TouchID or Passcode authorization, if you ask a question the requires personal information, it will only provide the information when the voice can be recognized. There is no other authorization available for the HomePod other than the voice.
For the iPhone, it requires FaceID/TouchID or Passcode for authorization, so any Siri request that requires personal information will direct the user to unlock the device first. It is this authorization that will be required to provide this information to verify it is actually you, as you are supposed to be the only one capable of accessing your device. If you have given your Passcode to someone else, you have authorized them to access your personal information, whether it comes from Siri or not.
Bottom line is that this is how it has always worked and there has been no change. On all devices, Siri will respond to anyones voice. Even in the case of the HomePod, Siri will respond to anyone's voice, with the only exception being is if the response would include personal information. On the iPhone, Siri will respond to anyones voice, with the exception of personal information requiring the device to be unlocked.
Excellent response. And you are totally correct. iOS 18 changed nothing and Siri has ALWAYS responded to anyone who wakes Siri on iPhone.
Mac Jim ID wrote:
braincoke wrote:
You have already posted the research paper, but seem to miss the point of the keyword "Research• ". You will find many topics of research if you simply go to the main site that discusses many research topics.
https://machinelearning.apple.com/research•
After reviewing all those research topics, you may have a better understanding that they are not saying these are currently implemented features. Could these topics become features? Possibly.
As has already been pointed out, there is one device that implements a feature to identify the person and that is the HomePod. Since the HomePod does not have any FaceID/TouchID or Passcode authorization, if you ask a question the requires personal information, it will only provide the information when the voice can be recognized. There is no other authorization available for the HomePod other than the voice.
For the iPhone, it requires FaceID/TouchID or Passcode for authorization, so any Siri request that requires personal information will direct the user to unlock the device first. It is this authorization that will be required to provide this information to verify it is actually you, as you are supposed to be the only one capable of accessing your device. If you have given your Passcode to someone else, you have authorized them to access your personal information, whether it comes from Siri or not.
Bottom line is that this is how it has always worked and there has been no change. On all devices, Siri will respond to anyones voice. Even in the case of the HomePod, Siri will respond to anyone's voice, with the only exception being is if the response would include personal information. On the iPhone, Siri will respond to anyones voice, with the exception of personal information requiring the device to be unlocked.
Excellent response. And you are totally correct. iOS 18 changed nothing and Siri has ALWAYS responded to anyone who wakes Siri on iPhone.
braincoke wrote:
https://machinelearning.apple.com/research
As has already been pointed out, there is one device that implements a feature to identify the person and that is the HomePod. Since the HomePod does not have any FaceID/TouchID or Passcode authorization, if you ask a question the requires personal information, it will only provide the information when the voice can be recognized. There is no other authorization available for the HomePod other than the voice.
For the iPhone, it requires FaceID/TouchID or Passcode for authorization, so any Siri request that requires personal information will direct the user to unlock the device first. It is this authorization that will be required to provide this information to verify it is actually you, as you are supposed to be the only one capable of accessing your device. If you have given your Passcode to someone else, you have authorized them to access your personal information, whether it comes from Siri or not.
Bottom line is that this is how it has always worked and there has been no change. On all devices, Siri will respond to anyones voice. Even in the case of the HomePod, Siri will respond to anyone's voice, with the only exception being is if the response would include personal information. On the iPhone, Siri will respond to anyones voice, with the exception of personal information requiring the device to be unlocked.
lobsterghost1 wrote:
Nobody, however, has really answered the Authors post, where they for some reason seem to be under the impression Siri just started responding to anyone who wakes Siri as something new with iOS 18. It is NOT new. Siri has always responded to anyone who wakes Siri on iPhone, iPad or Mac's.
Good point! Thanks for that.
IdrisSeabright wrote:
Lawrence Finch wrote:
Years ago I consulted for a major telecom company who wanted to implement just this, so you could pick up a phone anywhere in the country and just say “Hi, it’s me - Call Home.” (This was before the ubiquity of cell phones.) We tried, and concluded it was not available with current technology - and it still isn’t.
I don't know if they still do it but for a while at least, Verizon had something that let you access your account by voice recognition over the phone. You weren't required to give a passcode. Now, I suppose most people just use the app.
Spectrum - supposedly has this, but in all honesty, it has NEVER worked. I don't think technology is quite there yet.
Nobody, however, has really answered the Authors post, where they for some reason seem to be under the impression Siri just started responding to anyone who wakes Siri as something new with iOS 18. It is NOT new. Siri has always responded to anyone who wakes Siri on iPhone, iPad or Mac's.
braincoke wrote:
I have seen a lot of people answering on different posts that Siri is not supposed to recognize specifically your voice and the training is just to help Siri activate faster.
This appears to be misinformation as shown from this post https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/personalized-hey-siri
As pointed out, that is a research paper. What you are asking for is speaker identification, not speech recognition; that is not an iPhone feature. To implement speaker identification it would take 5 to 10 minutes of reading prepared text (I’ve implemented that in other applications); Apple has apparently decided that most users would not be willing to do that.
OTOH, it would be a great feature, as it could also be used for biometric security. Instead of touch ID or Face ID you could say; “Unlock my iPhone”. Of course the problem is how would you unlock the phone if you had laryngitis or even a bad cold?
Years ago I consulted for a major telecom company who wanted to implement just this, so you could pick up a phone anywhere in the country and just say “Hi, it’s me - Call Home.” (This was before the ubiquity of cell phones.) We tried, and concluded it was not available with current technology - and it still isn’t.
There seems to be hesitation to acknowledge that iOS might include a local speaker recognition system, even though it’s used in HomePod.
I understand that reading articles takes time so that is why I am posting excerpts.
I would just like to point out that I posted 2 different articles:
The one from 2023 references "the voice trigger system" in its conclusion, indicating that with iOS 17, the voice trigger system will support two trigger keywords on most Apple device platforms. This seems to indicate that this is not just a research, but an implementation, for a specific iOS version.
That said, I agree there’s no explicit mention of speaker recognition in Apple’s marketing or support materials, and iOS settings seem intentionally vague to avoid setting user expectations.
Regarding the HomePod vs. iPhone argument, the difference in threat models is noteworthy. The HomePod, as a stationary home device, may justify speaker recognition for sensitive information, while the iPhone, being mobile, might prioritize broader accessibility. Of course, this is speculative.
Finally, when contacting Apple Support, the guidance is not that “Siri will answer to anyone’s voice” but rather to retrain the local model, which suggests some degree of personalization is at play.
I’ve shared all my findings and sources to provide clarity, not to incite debate. I’d welcome more official clarification from Apple beyond their research articles, but without further input, I consider this discussion complete.
Thank you for your answer.
Have you seen this article?
https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/voice-trigger
It appears that this article explains in detail the voice recognition technology used.
I will quote some relevant parts of the article which, to me, indicate that in fact they are doing voice recognition. Which has always been my personal experience as well before iOS 18:
« In this article, we will discuss how Apple has designed a […] on-device voice trigger system. The voice trigger system supports several Apple device categories like iPhone, iPad, HomePod, […] simultaneously support two keywords for voice trigger detection: “Hey Siri” and “Siri.”
We address four specific challenges of voice trigger detection in this article:
Distinguishing a device’s primary user from other speakers
[…]
To reduce the false triggers from users other than the device owner, we personalize each device, and it only wakes up when the primary user says the trigger keywords. To do so, we leverage techniques from the field of speaker recognition.
[…]
The core of speaker recognition is robustly representing a user’s speech, which can vary in duration via a fixed-length speaker embedding. In a 2018, Personalized Hey Siri, we gave an overview of our speaker embedding extractor at the time. Since then, we have improved the accuracy and robustness by: »
I have seen a lot of people answering on different posts that Siri is not supposed to recognize specifically your voice and the training is just to help Siri activate faster.
This appears to be misinformation as shown from this post https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/personalized-hey-siri
braincoke wrote:
I have seen a lot of people answering on different posts that Siri is not supposed to recognize specifically your voice and the training is just to help Siri activate faster.
This appears to be misinformation as shown from this post https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/personalized-hey-siri
That appears to be a research paper describing what could be done. I've never seen any evidence that Apple ever implemented any of that.
Note that voice recognition is available on HomePods.
IdrisSeabright wrote:
lobsterghost1 wrote:
Nobody, however, has really answered the Authors post, where they for some reason seem to be under the impression Siri just started responding to anyone who wakes Siri as something new with iOS 18. It is NOT new. Siri has always responded to anyone who wakes Siri on iPhone, iPad or Mac's.
Good point! Thanks for that.
You're welcome. But what I'm having a tough time picturing in my pea-sized brain is you getting snippy and angry! 😂
There's no hesitation at all. What you're suggesting simply hasn't been implemented on iPhone or iPad. And more to your original point, iOS 18 brought no change to how Siri works on iPhone in terms of voice recognition. It is doing what it has always done.
Lawrence Finch wrote:
Years ago I consulted for a major telecom company who wanted to implement just this, so you could pick up a phone anywhere in the country and just say “Hi, it’s me - Call Home.” (This was before the ubiquity of cell phones.) We tried, and concluded it was not available with current technology - and it still isn’t.
I don't know if they still do it but for a while at least, Verizon had something that let you access your account by voice recognition over the phone. You weren't required to give a passcode. Now, I suppose most people just use the app.
IdrisSeabright wrote:
I don't know if they still do it but for a while at least, Verizon had something that let you access your account by voice recognition over the phone. You weren't required to give a passcode. Now, I suppose most people just use the app.
It was still 2 factor; you needed your username and password, and the speaker identification feature was the 2nd factor. But the app would remember the first two, so all it needed was the voice biometric. I actually have it on my FiOS account, and I recall having to train it for several minutes initially.
Lawrence Finch wrote:
It was still 2 factor; you needed your username and password, and the speaker identification feature was the 2nd factor. But the app would remember the first two, so all it needed was the voice biometric. I actually have it on my FiOS account, and I recall having to train it for several minutes initially.
I think the having to train it for several minutes was probably why I never used it. My goal (even when I worked for them) was to spend as little time on the phone with them as possible. At a certain point, I tended to lose my temper and get snippy.
The only device that supports Voice Recognition is the HomePod. It has always been that way. For any personal information on your device, it will require it to be unlocked with FaceID/TouchID or Passcode.
Siri responding to other people’s voice
