Apple patent to allow voice-based photo searching with Siri

The US Patent and Trademark Office, recently published an application for a patent by Apple that suggested the iPhone maker plans to integrate voice-based photo searching abilities into Siri.

The patent filed in March, known as ''Voice-Based Image Tagging and Searching,'' outlined a way of searching through tagged photos on a hand-held device using natural language text strings, which could be associated with an entity, activity, or location.

According to the application users could add voice tags to a photograph such as '' me at the beach,'' after which, relevant data would be connected to that file. To retrieve that photo and other related photos, users would need to make a request like  ''show me photos of me at the beach.''

The company decided to file the patent for several reasons, the first being camera technology and image processing had enabled humans to seamlessly interact and ''capture'' surroundings through digital photography, thus resulting in an increase of image storage usage on hand-held devices.

Also, the volume of digital photographs on hand-held devices had increased so the ability to catalogue and organise them had become a high priority for the company.

According to commentators, at the moment, the iPhone is capable of tagging snaps by time taken and location, but the process could be simplified by the new process in the application. Further, with the use of natural language, users would be able to chat with Apple's robot butler in a very conversational way.

Users might not even have to tag each picture, as it could detect who featured in which, and when and where they were taken, and do the hard work for users. This would be a huge time saver.

Commentators say voice tagging would also put Siri, which has been at a bit of a loose end of late, to some good use.