It seems that Steve Jobs has been watching Knight Rider lately.

Look Who's Talking?

The Apple chief appears to be overseeing an effort to make his company's dominant portable audio player, the iPod, talk so that users can pick the next song without having to look at the screen. A recent patent filing by the company points to the device having the ability to read artist names and album and song titles to someone during "eyes busy situations," such as driving or bicycling.

Scotsman.com science reporter Richard Gray first unveiled the patent filing Sunday. Apple declined to comment.

"The patent also makes clear that text-to-speech technology is likely to spread to other hand-held electronic devices such as mobile phones and palm-top computers," Gray wrote.

The report points out the difficulty of bringing such technology to bear, but the filing hinted at using "voice talent"--such as actors and other famous people--to enunciate the names and titles instead of using a robot-style voice.

"It is possible to create very high-quality text-to-voices these days," an Edinburgh University speech technology expert told Gray. "We have seen some already used in mobile phones, but it has struggled in the past with difficult words and names. The technology is much better now and can cope with most things."

The bulk of the work behind such a technology would be done on the computer being used by the person downloading the music. When a song or album is uploaded, software would create audio files to accompany each song, artist, and album. When a user begins using the clickwheel, the device will read the relevant information so the user can avoid looking at the screen.