let debugString = "<speak><emphasis level=\"reduced\">Hello</emphasis></speak>" let utterance = AVSpeechUtterance(ssmlRepresentation: debugString)! // <--- Freezes I encountered this bug in iOS 18 beta I sent a feedback through Feedback app.

I'm comparing _{tags in SSML with iOS16 beta. AVSpeechSynthesizer adds short pause before and after tag, where Google TTS does not. https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/docs/ssml Also it pronunces "." as "period". let uttreance = AVSpeechUtterance(ssmlRepresentation: "<speak> I can also substitute phrases, like the <sub alias=\"World Wide Web Consortium\">W3C}. </speak>") The same happens with <phoneme> tags. I think it shouldn't have extra pauses.