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AI-powered headphones let users choose what they hear

The devices are controlled via voice commands or a smartphone app.


Active noise control technology is used by noise-canceling headphones to minimize or completely block out outside noise. These headphones are popular because they offer a quieter, more immersive listening experience—especially in noisy areas. However, despite the many advancements in the technology, people still don’t have much control over which sounds their headphones block out and which they let pass.

Semantic hearing

Now, deep learning algorithms have been developed by a group of academics at the University of Washington that enable users to select which noises to filter through their headphones in real-time. The system has been named “semantic hearing” by its creators.

Longevity Neurotech report

DBS delivers electric currents to an electrode implanted in the brain.


Neurotechnology – or – while still an emerging industry, has attracted both major capital investments, and extensive media coverage in recent years. As tech relentlessly searches for the next “big tech platform” in the aftermath of the smartphone era [1], we propose that the answer may lie within our own minds. At NTX Services, we definenology as any technological intervention that interacts with the brain or central nervous system either directly or indirectly, and as attempts to integrate human and machine to enhance both, applications of the technology are broad ranging.

Often described as a new field, is actually based on decades of academic research, previously held back from commercialization at scale due to technological limitations, and slow changes in government policies and regulations. Although humans have been researching the brain and its bioelectrical signals since the 1600s [2], the first major breakthrough in was the invention of the electroencephalogram (EEG) by Hans Berger in 1929 [3]. Since this initial invention, several key developments have influenced the evolution of the industry until 2016, when Neuralink was founded [4].

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“There are no wake words so it’s not always listening or always recording,” Chaudhri said at the beginning of a 10-minute launch video on the company’s website. “In fact, it doesn’t do anything until you engage with it, and your engagement comes through your voice, touch, gesture or the laser ink display.”

In addition to the upfront cost of the device, customers will have to pay a $24 monthly data subscription to T-Mobile, the company said. Having a separate phone number means that, unlike smart watches, the pin isn’t tethered to a smartphone.

Chptr, a memorialization app for gathering and sharing memories of loved ones, raises $1.5M

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The startup was founded in 2020 by Rehan Choudhry, who came up with the idea for the app when he was helping his wife, a news anchor at CBS New York, put together video tributes for the first victims of COVID-19 in New York City. Choudhry told TechCrunch in an interview that the pair was reaching out to the families, friends, neighbors and colleagues of the victims to paint a picture of what their life was like.

“The thing I realized after talking to a lot of families was that these videos served as almost a reunion point for people that they will continue to grieve around,” Choudhry said. “We noticed that the grieving process that would normally take 90 days was extended to months because they had something to rally around. So then the question for me was why doesn’t everyone on the planet have access to this because we all have smartphones and social media. So I went down the rabbit hole of discovery and it brought me to Chptr.”

Noise-canceling headphones could let you pick and choose the sounds you want to hear

The technology that makes it possible, called semantic hearing, could pave the way for smarter hearing aids and earphones, allowing the wearer to filter out some sounds while boosting others.

The system, which is still in prototype, works by connecting off-the-shelf noise-canceling headphones to a smartphone app. The microphones embedded in these headphones, which are used to cancel out noise, are repurposed to also detect the sounds in the world around the wearer. These sounds are then played back to a neural network, which is running on the smartphone; then certain sounds are boosted or suppressed in real time, depending on the user’s preferences. It was developed by researchers from the University of Washington, who presented the research at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) last week.

The team trained the network on thousands of audio samples from online data sets and sounds collected from various noisy environments. Then they taught it to recognize 20 everyday sounds, such as a thunderstorm, a toilet flushing, or glass breaking.