One of the biggest problems with AI infused virtual assistants like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa is that it’s annoying and potentially embarrassing to interact with them in public. Not only can others hear your conversations but the mere act of constantly engaging with them is disruptive to those around you. Fortunately, Microsoft has been working on a solution: a way to silently interact with our virtual friends.
As Futurism explains, “Microsoft’s ‘silent’ technology makes use of the way whispering works. When you whisper you exhale breath from your lungs with your words. Microsoft’s proposed device would instead have you inhale while whispering (give it a try, it’s even harder than it sounds.) It’s a process known as ingressive airflow, and Microsoft proposes exploiting it to enable devices to process whispered voice commands in public.”
As interesting as this concept is there are some drawbacks. In order for it to work you’d have to get extremely close to your phones, which is not very subtle, not to mention potentially unsanitary. Also, there would be a learning curve with getting used to whisper speaking in this way and I suppose that it’s possible that not everyone would be able to do it.
But at the same time there is also a lot of potential for this technology. Perhaps one day we could even get to the point where we could actually whisper from several feet away or even communicate with our devices entirely telepathically just by speaking to ourselves internally. Either way, it’s clear that the way that we interact with our devices and virtual assistants is likely to change in the years to come.
Is Ingressive Airflow the Greatest Idea Ever?
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