Researchers at the University of Washington have developed AI headphones the enable the wearer to look at a person speaking for three to five seconds to “enroll” them and then cancels all other sounds in the environment, isolating just the enrolled speaker’s voice in real time.
Even if the listener moves around in noisy places and no longer faces the speaker, their voice is still isolated. How does it work? A person simply wears these off-the-shelf headphones fitted with microphones and then presses a button while directing their head at someone talking. The headphones send that signal to an on-board embedded computer, where the team’s machine learning software learns the desired speaker’s vocal patterns. The system locks onto that speaker’s voice and continues to play it back to the listener, even as the two move around. It’s safe to say that you won’t need the MOONDROP MIAD 01 smartphone to enjoy these headphones.
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We tend to think of AI now as web-based chatbots that answer questions. But in this project, we develop AI to modify the auditory perception of anyone wearing headphones, given their preferences. With our devices you can now hear a single speaker clearly even if you are in a noisy environment with lots of other people talking,” said Shyam Gollakota, a UW professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.
