An AI voice assistant in French on iPhone

The French voice

French has its own voice in Kokoro, the first of Orvena's two voice engines. It comes with a pronunciation dictionary for French, sounds out rare words from spelling rules, and says numbers the way a French speaker would. It switches in on its own when a reply is in French.

The download

The voices for English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese come in one pack of about 345 MB. It downloads after you unlock voice, together with a pack of about 400 MB for 26 other languages, and both finish in the background. You can remove the pack you do not need under Settings, then Voice.

Setting it up

Start a voice conversation with the waveform button in the message field. With Spoken language left on Automatic, Orvena listens in the language of the current conversation, or in the language of its menus when the conversation is new. To keep it on French, open Settings and, in the Voice section, set Spoken language to French.

The first time you use a language, iOS downloads its on-device speech recognition model, so the "Getting ready…" screen stays up a little longer that once. Orvena's language picker only offers languages that it can both hear and speak.

Answers in French

Orvena's own model replies in the language you write or speak, message by message, so you can switch mid-conversation.

Apple Intelligence also supports French, so on iOS 27 Orvena can answer with Apple's on-device model as well.

Siri and French

Siri supports French, so with Siri set to French you can say "Demande à Orvena" to hand Orvena a question, or "Parle à Orvena" to start a voice conversation.

What you can ask

• Move my 3 pm meeting to tomorrow.
• What is the weather this weekend?
• Remind me to call the dentist tomorrow at 9.
• Find a pharmacy near me.
• How did I sleep last night?

Orvena shows what it did for each request, and anything consequential asks you first.

What stays on the iPhone

The voice is generated on the iPhone, and speech recognition runs on the device. With Orvena's own model, what you say and its answer stay on the phone; you choose whether a request goes to a cloud model. Live voice with your own OpenAI key is the one exception: it sends your audio to OpenAI, and it asks first.

Common questions

Is the French voice free?

Voice conversations are part of Premium Unlock, a one-time purchase with no subscription. Typed chat in French is free.

Does the French voice assistant work offline?

Yes, once it is set up. With Orvena's own model and the voice pack downloaded, listening, answering and speaking all run on the iPhone. The first use of a language downloads Apple's recognition model for it.

Is the Orvena app in French?

Yes. Its menus, settings and messages are available in French, and it follows your iPhone's language.

Sources

• Apple Support: How to get the next generation of Apple Intelligence