January 22, 2020

Speech recognition and speech synthesis on iOS with Swift

Everyone knows Siri, and many people use it every day. Why? Because Siri provides a very fast and user-friendly way of interacting with an iOS device.

Convenience is not the only motivation for this type of interaction, though. The combination of speech recognition and speech synthesis feels more personal than using a touch screen. On top of that, the option for verbal communication enables visually impaired people to interact with your app.

As you probably already know, Siri’s communication mechanism can be split up in two main components: speaking and listening. Speaking is formally known as “speech synthesis” whereas listening is often referred to as “speech recognition.” Although the tasks look very different in code, they have one thing in common: both are powered by machine learning.

Luckily, Apple’s speech synthesis and speech recognition APIs aren’t private — everyone has access to their cutting-edge technology. In this tutorial, you’ll build an app that uses those APIs to speak and listen to you.

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