By Nick Bild

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have enabled the development of all sorts of useful tools that can make us more efficient and add convenience and enrichment to our lives. But in some cases, getting people to use these tools can be a tall order. A major barrier to adoption lies in the types of data that these tools need to collect. In order for that shiny, new AI-powered gadget to do its job, it needs to be supplied with a steady diet of data — and that may include video or audio that could reveal some very private information.

Consider the applications made possible by utilizing an always-listening microphone on a wearable AI device. With this combination, a variety of health monitoring tools and ultra-customized personal assistants can be created. But in order to reap these benefits, one must be willing to let everything that they, and anyone around them, say (and every other sound as well!) be recorded before likely being transmitted over the public internet to an unknown server farm in the cloud.

That is, of course, a hard pill to swallow for many people that could otherwise benefit from these tools. But thanks to the work of a group of engineers at the MIT Media Lab, always-listening microphones may soon become more acceptable. They developed a prototype wearable device called MeMic that serves to activate a microphone only when the wearer of the device is speaking. This prevents the conversations of bystanders, and other unrelated noises, from being recorded.