Forward-looking: Tech giants recently introduced hearing aid and noise isolation functionality for earbuds and smart glasses, but UK researchers are using visual AI to bring the technology a step further. If it proves accurate, lip-reading AI could make hearing aids more effective and affordable.
Researchers at the universities of Heriot-Watt, Edinburgh Napier, and Stirling recently showcased a pair of smart glasses that read lips using an AI-trained camera. The teams are currently cooperating with hearing aid manufacturers to release the glasses sometime next year.
When the wearer looks at a person talking, the glasses analyze lip movements to enhance and clean up their speech. The researchers trained the AI to tune out traffic, washing machines, and other kinds of background noise samples.
The technology is primarily intended to assist people with hearing loss. The researchers suggest that they will complement hearing aids instead of replacing them. However, users with normal hearing can also benefit by wearing the glasses while conversing in noisy and crowded environments.
Apple's AirPods models support similar hearing aid, noise cancellation, and sound isolation functionality. Last year, the company's AirPods Pro 2 received FDA approval for use as over-the-counter hearing aids, providing users with a far more affordable alternative to traditional devices.
The UK researchers hope that the AI glasses will also help reduce the cost of hearing assistance. They claim that existing hearing aids and noise-canceling headphones struggle to differentiate between multiple speakers, while the glasses can focus on one person at a time if two people are talking.
However, the lip-reading functionality depends on an internet connection. Since the glasses lack the processing power to host the AI locally, they must send and receive data to a cloud server in Sweden. Still, the researchers claim that high-speed broadband and 5G connections make the real-time lip reading feel almost instantaneous.
It remains unclear whether smart glasses from Meta and other tech giants could soon feature this technology. Meta's AI glasses include components that could theoretically support the feature, such as a 12MP camera and speakers for listening to music. Meanwhile, rumors suggest that Apple plans to launch a pair of AI smart glasses next year that resemble Meta's device but feature superior build quality. Both companies have also advertised live translation for wearables.
Experimental AI smart glasses can read lips to improve hearing aids
