Create a Personal Voice Clone on iPhone (iOS 17+)

Personal Voice is an iPhone feature introduced in iOS 17 that lets you record your own voice so that your phone can speak in a voice that sounds like you. It was created specifically for people who have conditions that may cause them to lose their ability to speak — such as ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig's disease), throat cancer, Parkinson's disease, or other neurological or physical conditions.

The idea is that you record 150 short phrases while you can still speak clearly. Your iPhone uses those recordings to build a synthesized version of your voice. Later — or right away — you can type what you want to say, and the phone will speak it out loud in your own voice through a feature called Live Speech.

Apple designed Personal Voice with privacy as a priority. All the processing and storage happens on your iPhone — your voice recordings and the synthesized voice model never leave your device. Apple cannot access them, and they are not stored in iCloud unless you specifically choose to back them up with end-to-end encryption enabled.

The recording process takes roughly 15 to 20 minutes total if you do it in one sitting, though you can split it across multiple sessions. You need a quiet room, because background noise will reduce the quality of your synthesized voice. The phrases are designed to cover a wide range of sounds and speech patterns.

Personal Voice works together with Live Speech (also in Accessibility settings), which lets you type text and have it spoken aloud. You can save commonly used phrases as shortcuts so you can speak them quickly without typing them each time. This is most useful in conversations where speed matters.