UW News

Bandhav Veluri

May 23, 2024

AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd, by looking at them just once

A closeup image on a person wearing a pair of black headphones. The person’s face is out of focus; the headphones have a small microphone attached to them with electrical tape and a button on the side.

A University of Washington team has developed an artificial intelligence system that lets someone wearing headphones look at a person speaking for three to five seconds to “enroll” them. The system then plays just the enrolled speaker’s voice in real time, even as the pair move around in noisy environments.