AI can help people better hear one speaker in a crowd People wearing special headphones can focus them on one speaker, essentially tuning out all other noise A small group said the system improved the clarity of the speaker’s voice twice as much as in unfiltered audio TUESDAY, May 28, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- New AI headphone technology can help people “tune in” to specific folks in a crowd, allowing them to better hear a speaker even in noisy environments. With the system, called “Target Speech Hearing,” a user wearing headphones looks at a person speaking for three to five seconds to “enroll” them, researchers report. The AI then cancels out all other sounds in the environment and just plays the enrolled speaker’s voice, even if the listener is moving around and no longer faces the speaker.
“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 senior researcher , a professor of computer science and engineering with the University of Washington. The AI system mimics and improves the human brain’s ability to focus on speech coming from a single person, researchers explained. To use the system, a person wearing off-the-shelf headphones fitted with microphones taps a button while directly looking at someone talking.
The sound waves of the speaker’s voice reach microphones on either side of the headset, and the signal is forwarded to AI installed in the headphones. The .
