Developers at the University of Washington have created AI headphones with Apple's M2 chip that translate the speech of multiple speakers while preserving voice features

A team of developers from the University of Washington has presented a concept of innovative headphones that can change international communication, making it more comfortable and natural.

Here's What We Know

The engineers embedded Apple's M2 chip and Sonic Presence SP15C binaural microphone into a housing from Sony's WH-1000XM4 headphones. This solution allowed the device to use AI to translate speech synchronously while preserving the vocal features of multiple speakers and sound direction.

The headphones translate from Spanish, German or French with perfect accuracy and take 2-4 seconds to process the sound. The technology adapts the sound volume depending on the distance to the speaker. The entire process is carried out locally with complete privacy.

Such headphones can be used in online conferences, in training programmes and in ordinary communication with foreigners.

The creators admit that the delay of translation for 2-4 seconds can complicate the dialogue, but with the development of technology this drawback will surely be eliminated.

The project code is freely available and open for developers.

Source: Sigchi