iphone speech to text and vice versa with siri

Question

Now that we know that the iPhone has speech to text and text to speech capabilities, as demonstrated by Siri. Is this going to be an API available to developers? Has apple said anything about this?

Answer 1

Apple have not said anything about an API for Siri yet. Speech to text is implemented in iOS 5 in the form of a new button on the keyboard, so you can dictate chunks of text.

Answer 2

iPhone has had text-to-speech since at least the 3GS. And no, they haven't said anything about exposing an API.

Answer 3

If it's text-to-speech you're after, you might be tempted to license Nuance's voice "Samantha", which is the same as the US Siri voice. You can get it via Nuance's API or just using OS X's say -o command if you only need TTS at compile-time.

However, doing either will result in your app being rejected by Apple for infringing their trademarks. They will reject the app even if you make no reference to Siri in the app, even if the app bears no resemblance to Siri, and even if the app is not any kind of personal assistant.