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New IPhone Feature Can Clone Your Voice In Just 15 Minutes

Other accessibility features include Assistive Access, Live Speech and more (Apple )

Apple has unveiled a new iOS feature that allows iPhone, iPad and Mac users to make a digital clone of their voice in just 15 minutes.

The Personal Voice feature announced on Tuesday is aimed at helping those who are at risk of losing their voice, such as people with an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) diagnosis or other neurological conditions.

The new feature forms part of a suite of updates announced ahead of Global Accessibility Awareness Day on 18 May, and will likely be rolled out as part of iOS 17 later this year.

The Motor Neurone Disease Association suggests that cloning a voice, known as voice banking, typically takes an average of two hours or longer with current tech, and can cost hundreds of pounds.

The Independent got a first look at the new feature in action, and the Personal Voice sounded remarkably similar to the user's actual voice, albeit with a slightly robotic, synthesised tone.

It can be trained in 15 minutes simply by reading a bunch of randomly generated text prompts, and uses on-device machine learning to ensure your data is kept private and secure.

Personal Voice will be available for use with Apple's new Live Speech feature on iOS, which will let users type what they want to say and have it spoken out loud, during in-person conversations, as well as with phone and FaceTime calls. The feature is said to work with all accents and dialects.

(Apple)

As well as features for speech accessibility, Apple announced a cognitive disability setting for the iPhone and iPad called Assistive Access, which essentially lets you pare your device down to a few core apps of your choosing.

Arranged in a grid or a list, it simplifies the user interface down to large, easily readable buttons, so you can make calls, access an emoji-only keyboard, and a fuss-free camera, without the clutter.

Companies such as Doro and Jitterbug currently have a stranglehold on the "simple phone", offering devices for senior users that strip away the bulk, and deliver a simple user interface with large high-contrast buttons that make it easy to use a phone.

With Apple's new Assistive Access feature, those with cognitive disabilities will be able to take advantage of a mainstream iPhone device and its features without having to opt for an Android device or one designed for their specific need.

(Apple)

In addition, Apple previewed a new feature in the Magnifier app for low vision users called Point and Speak, which makes use of the camera, the LiDAR Scanner and on-device machine learning to read aloud text that a user places their finger on.

Plus, the company announced Mac support for Made for iPhone hearing devices, phonetic suggestions for Voice Control users and the ability for Switch Control users to turn their switches into game controllers on the iPhone and iPad.

Apple has made it a tradition over the years to unveil new accessibility features ahead of WWDC in June, where it usually reveals the next iOS update, emphasising its prioritisation of accessibility within the iOS ecosystem.

While  Apple didn't state when exactly the new updates would be coming to its devices later this year, a rollout alongside iOS 17 seems likely, given previous announcements.

Your IPhone Will Soon Be Able Clone Your Voice Using AI

By: Kathleen St. John

The next iPhone system update will include new features designed to assist folks who have difficulty speaking — by replicating their own voices with artificial intelligence.

Personal Voice, which replicates voices, and Live Speech, which allows people to type words that can be spoken out loud, will be part of a suite of new accessibility features arriving with the operating system iOS 17 this fall.

"Accessibility is part of everything we do at Apple," said Sarah Herrlinger, Apple's senior director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives, in an Apple blog post. "These groundbreaking features were designed with feedback from members of disability communities every step of the way, to support a diverse set of users and help people connect in new ways."

Adobe

The Personal Voice feature requires users to complete a 15-minute audio sample, consisting of a randomized series of statements read aloud. The app then creates a simulation of the user's voice with the speech data.

It works seamlessly with Live Speech, so people can use the voice re-creation to speak on phone and video calls by typing whatever they want to say. They can also use it for in-person communication.

The idea is that folks who already have, or may experience, difficulty speaking will now be able to communicate with their own voice, instead of Siri or another generic computer voice.

Of course, the "AI" shorthand conjures up some unsettling ideas — what if someone accesses and uses your simulated voice for nefarious purposes?

Apple insists that guardrails are in place. For instance, the internet is not used in the creation of voice simulations; it's all done within the device itself. And Apple won't have access to voice data, either, since it'll remain un-linked to your Apple ID unless you opt in.

Apple

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The new accessibility suite, dubbed Assistive Access, offers more customization in popular apps, allowing people with a variety of cognitive and physical disabilities to create an easier, more helpful user experience.

An updated Magnifier app will also help low-vision and blind users get a better view of everyday items. But Personal Voice and Live Speech are drawing the most attention, especially for folks who need help speaking.

"If you can tell [friends and family] you love them, in a voice that sounds like you, it makes all the difference in the world — and being able to create your synthetic voice on your iPhone in just 15 minutes is extraordinary," said Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS) advocate Philip Green in the Apple post.

This story originally appeared on Simplemost. Check out Simplemost for additional stories.

Copyright 2025 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

How To Clone Your Voice On Your IPhone Or Mac

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One feature you may not have come across on your iPhone or Mac is Personal Voice—it was only introduced in iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma. It essentially creates a clone of your voice, which you can then use in a variety of apps.

It was built as a game-changing accessibility feature for those at risk of losing their voice, giving them the opportunity to carry on talking through digital means even when they can no longer do it physically. However, it's something anyone can make use of through their Apple devices.

Even if your voice is working fine, Personal Voice is an interesting feature to explore and set up—and an indication of the kind of technologies that artificial intelligence might continue to make possible in the years to come.

On-device machine learning AI is used to do the necessary processing, so all of your recorded audio stays on your devices, and isn't sent back to the cloud. (If you decide to share it between devices, this will be done in encrypted form via iCloud.) Thanks to the protections Apple has built in here, no one is going to be able to use the tech to impersonate you in phone calls or recordings.

How to set up Personal Voice You'll need to work through 150 phrases to set up a Personal Voice. Screenshot: Apple

From a software perspective, you need iOS 17, iPadOS 17, or macOS Sonoma—or a later version—to set up Personal Voice. For hardware, you need an iPhone 12, 5th-gen iPad Air, 3rd-gen 11-inch iPad Pro, 5th-gen 12.9-inch iPad Pro, or later, or a Mac with an Apple silicon chip inside (the M1 or later). Recording takes about 15 minutes, but you don't need to do everything in one go.

If you're using an iPhone or an iPad, head to Settings then tap Accessibility, Personal Voice, and Create a Personal Voice. On a Mac, you'll find the same Accessibility option by opening the Apple menu then choosing System Settings. 

Follow the instructions on screen to record your audio, giving your voice a name and then repeating the phrases as you're asked to. To pause a recording session, tap or click the Done button, or quit out of the recording window, and the recordings you've done are saved for you to come back to whenever needed. Note that the processing to create the voice can take several hours.

You can create more than one Personal Voice, and you can delete any voices you've already configured from the same Personal Voice screen in Accessibility—just select the voice to bring up the option to erase it. You can also export the voice recordings you've made if you'd like.

How to use Personal Voice You can bring up Live Speech wherever you are on your iPhone. Screenshot: Apple

Head into the Accessibility and Personal Voice screen on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, and you'll see two toggle switches: one to Share across devices and one to Allow applications to use your Personal Voice. Turn both of these on to make sure your voice can be used across every device you're signed into with the same Apple ID.

Your Personal Voice can be used as part of another Apple accessibility feature called Live Speech, which is exactly what it sounds like: your synthesized voice used to talk in real time. To set it up, select Live Speech from the Accessibility menu on your Apple device—you'll see that your newly created voice comes up as one of the options for the voice output, alongside the default system voice. You can also set up a bank of preset phrases from the same screen.

With Live Speech enabled, you can triple-tap the side button on an iPhone or iPad, or click the Live Speech icon in the menu bar on a Mac (it looks like a keyboard). You're then able to type out a sentence which will be read out loud in your own voice. It will still have a synthesized edge to it, but the results are impressive.

The same Live Speech shortcut can be used if you're in the Phone or FaceTime apps on your device, as well as in any other apps that support the Live Speech feature. Whenever the text input box appears, you'll see a bookmark icon within it—click or tap on this to bring up your list of saved phrases.

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