Hello, Siri: Apple Patent Reveals Voice Assistant May Come To Mac Desktops

Want to talk to your computer? Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) Siri could soon make its debut. An OS X. A patent application published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday reveals that the Cupertino, California, tech titan is working on bringing the mobile digital assistant to the desktop.

The patent, titled “Intelligent Digital Assistant in a Desktop Environment,” is detailed in a 92-page document that describes and illustrates Apple’s implementation of Siri on the desktop. The feature would expand OS X’s current voice capabilities, which are currently limited to voice dictation.

Based on the descriptions and illustrations in the patent, the desktop version of Siri would be able to listen to natural language and also receive text inputs, which would then be interpreted and used to perform various commands on an OS X desktop. The desktop Siri would also use a similar backend to the mobile version of Siri, which relies on a remote server to process phrases spoken to the digital assistant.

Some parts of the patent envision Siri being called upon through the use of mouse gestures, while others propose a dedicated Siri button on the OS X application dock.

The “Intelligent Digital Assistant” patent complements another voice command patent application filed by Apple, which covers its “Hey, Siri” voice prompt, first unveiled in June during the 2014 Worldwide Developers Conference in California, Patently Apple reported.

At this time it’s unknown if this desktop version of Siri will make it into OS X Yosemite, which is due for release this fall. The functionality described in the patent is not currently present in beta versions of OS X Yosemite, Apple Insider reported.