A team of engineers from the University of Michigan has developed a new device dubbed PrivacyMic that could pave the way for a new breed of smart speakers. The new device is capable of capturing information inside the home without recording conversations.
With smart speakers becoming popular, many have raised concerns about their microphones are constantly listening for their trigger words, so they end up listening to everything going on inside the house.
PrivacyMic can hear things beyond human hearing range
The new PrivacyMic, however, listens to signal that would turn on the smart speaker without eavesdropping on all conversations. The device picks up ultrasonic sound frequencies that are beyond human hearing range.
Researchers say that many common things that happen to be in a regular household such as dishwashers, computers, even your footsteps, generate sounds in the ultrasonic range with a frequency of 20 kilohertz or higher. While humans might not be able to hear these sounds, they can be heard by cats, dogs, and the new PrivacyMic.
The new device is built to extract ultrasonic information around the user to identify when it’s summoned. During the testing, researchers demonstrated that the device is capable of identifying household and office activities with accuracy above 95%.
No audio information is recorded and stored
Alanson Sample, associate professor at the University of Michigan, says that there are many instances where users want home automation systems and smart speakers to learn what’s going on in the house. However, nobody wants these devices to listen to everything that is being said.
He adds that the team has found that users can have a system that understands what’s going on without having to record any audible information.
The PrivacyMic filters out audible information directly on the device, making it more secure than other security methods that usually record audio data and then keep it secure. With the new device, there’s no audible information, to begin with. While the new tech looks promising, we’ll still have to wait and see whether this technology makes it to mainstream devices or not.
