Show HN: Subvocal – Talk to your computer without making noise

I remember seeing AlterEgo a few years ago and thinking it was so cool (obviously was missing voice agents to make it really cook)

Was just thinking this could be applicable for people with some disabilities tied to an actual voice agent and speaker. Or even in foreign countries where you talk and respond in the foreign language instead of waiting for an additional translation layer.

> "you don't actually have to move your lips or even open your mouth for this to work ... It's a bit weird to do"

In the video Dave just finished the training mode and is silently moving his lips, which seems pretty natural to me. I just spent a minute trying to do 'internal speech' (as many elements of speech as possible with lips closed). It does feel weird and seems like internal speech is probably providing a fair bit less signal for the system to sense (in both signal freq and amplitude). I realized I can't guess at how much articulation is 'enough' without feedback.

Based on that I'm guessing adapting to internal speech might follow a bit different path than silent speech, which seems more like 'just do what you already do silently'. Extrapolating, I expect training internal speech might involve more real-time feedback to help the user find the right degree and kind of articulation.

I realize you're still in the prototype phase but I assume an increasing number of people are getting multiple longer sessions. Do new users advance from silent to internal speech quickly and stay there? I'd be surprised as, intuitively, 'Silent -> Internal' seems like a bigger step than 'Normal -> Silent'.

Separately, if I was using it daily, I can imagine wanting to evolve a kind of micro-expression shorthand for 'Yes', 'No', 'Pause' and 'Stop', since two humans naturally evolve similar non-verbal queues over time. Vocalizing words is flexible and expressive but not efficient. It would seem odd if an intelligent, adaptive 'invisible friend' living on my face for years didn't adapt to me and me to it. Are you guys thinking in those directions for the future?

Just preordered -- glasses request: there's no way to say it nicely, I have a big nose. With a high bridge. Many glasses are really tough to get properly placed; may I request you not give up on the pads w/metal adjusters that you have in the product photos? Don't let a designer take them away from you, us folks not one standard deviation from 'normal' noses will thank you.

Second, how tough is this signal processing? Will it be done on-glasses, or through an app? Third, what's the equivalent of a wake word for these? I'm reminded of the Apple Vision Pro radar to see if your fingers are clicking. I could imagine a lot of modalities where I want to just start talking and have things happen, and a lot where I don't want the glasses to pick it up. Fourth, I think a cool voice change demo would be rad -- not sure what latency is like, but if you could get it end to end under like 250ms you could probably have someone exaggerate the mouth movements and pipe out audio of them talking like someone else. Which would be another really cool demo.

Super cool. You're going to be working 80 hour weeks for the next year, I'm excited to see what you put out!

One thing you might consider is actually telling people what it is on the homepage. Took me a fair bit of work to understand that this is effectively a pair of smart glasses.

Maybe I could have figured that out from the video but for folks who can’t watch the video it’s quite hard to discover what you’re building.

Based on my understanding of the technology, this also means you can effectively dictate in loud environments. Correct?

I find that I need this most often when I'm doing yard work, running equipment, or cleaning out the garage. Audio based microphones pick up so much noise.

I think this is incredibly cool and straight out of a sci-fi novel! I think this is phenomenal for accessibility and for hands-free computing in general. I also agree with other comments that the website should have more detail on how it works, such as what you included in the post body. Amazing work guys!

If the tech is mostly in the glasses temples, I would prefer to have something that attaches to my existing glasses. I have prescription glasses and a big head, tried the Even G2 smart glasses and the available frames set just too small for me

This is:

1. Insanely cool

2. Gives me serious "whispering earring" vibes. Imagine having a full on conversation with an AI via subvocalization and listening with ear bud to guide you throughout the day. https://gwern.net/doc/fiction/science-fiction/2012-10-03-yva...

Cue the resurgence of lip reading-based espionage. Imagining having to scan the room for people watching subvocalizers. Will subvocalizers start holding up a clipboard over their face a la NFL coaches?

For the ones thinking this is great, have you actually tried to talk without making sounds?

I don't think it is an intuitive action at all and I became self-conscious about not making a sound rather than talking like I normally would.

I suppose it would require some "getting used to."

Regardless, I think it is a cool idea and a real problem. Sometimes I don't want to type nor talk out loud so I find myself whispering at my phone like I'm telling it a dirty secret.

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As I'm writing this, I think this kind of product might not hit the market for consumers, but I'm seeing this used by Flock like companies to spy on people's speech, so kudos on making machine lip reading a thing!

Do most people talk faster than they can type? It's the opposite for me - I also read aloud slower than I can read in my head.

Can someone comment on the AirPods tweet making the rounds (i.e. the subvocal killer)? I am excited by Subvocal, but am wondering how much bespoke hardware is actually required?

I have this problem and I was wondering how it would be solved. For now I can cope because I mostly work from home but I’ll keep track of you guys. Best of luck!

I am so glad to see an unpolished early look and an honest evaluation of about five percent error rate in the YouTube video. The really cool stuff will be the applications on top of `subvocal` though at least in my opinion.

So this could take "noise canceling" to a whole new level if you could somehow "speak" across a loud bar or across the world, for that matter. Being integrated into something like Signal or similar end to end encrypted platform would be interesting as well.

I'm more looking for the Jane from Speaker for the Dead version. In-ear device that can hear and feel the subvocalization.

With so many people singing the praises of voice to text, I keep thinking about how most sci-fi futures feature subvocalization as a prerec for that kind of adoption. Always love to see sci-fi come to life!

You can have a silent conversation with someone else wearing the device? This does not bode well for casinos.

Theres a LOT of people working on this.. Cornell have been putting students on this task for about 5 years.. Lots of fun different ways of doing it. Interesting you went the radar from glasses route.. I wish you well. Yet to see a product apart from the odd lip reading ML project that makes it into a product..

I think these have a place but I can't say the same for most other new AI communication devices. Creeper glasses, pins, watches, desktop units etc. I want to be able to speak and hear from my agents at all times but why would I want a new device when I already wear earbuds? New products are being designed to pick up low murmuring/whispering, like the Subtle earbuds, but I assume most earbuds will be designed this way in future.

Very cool! I was curious to hear the details of how it worked but couldn’t find them on your landing page. I’m glad to see them here and you might want to include them more prominently on the page itself. I didn’t even realize it was a pair of glasses til I read the above.

Someone built an open-source version of this, but it’s far from polished:

https://github.com/joeblau/subvox

There was this really interesting one where it reads your lips:

https://github.com/amywork777/lipflow

I’m using these to build my own so I can work in co-working spaces, planes, and libraries. Though moving my mouth with no words might draw some eyes.

Super excited to see more products in this area. I talk to my computer the majority of the time now, and I can do that because I work from home. If I were on public transportation or in an office, it would be much more difficult. It's been interesting to watch the Overton window, if you will, shift for people talking _to_ their phones. Now, the majority of my family will use voice to text on their phone whereas I remember just a few years ago, if not even just a year ago, it was made fun of.

I'm curious about whether this could be done with the hardware mounted on top of the laptop screen or on a stand on the desk, rather than the glasses form factor. Have you explored this?

One of the coolest things I have recently seen but would love some details. It also got me thinking a about this recent Neuralink post.

https://neuralink.com/updates/72-hour-voice-hackathon/

What I would really like is a washable "cyber suit". Mock or turtle neck (for the voice / STT capture / control), EEG sensors, breathing rate, blood pressure, gestures via arm motion sensors,). Removable rechargeable battery module to wash the torso / shirt slap it on a clean one. For EEG it would have to be pretty compressed though, so not sure it would be comfortable enough to wear to sleep? maybe only an internal harness needs to be that compressed. not sure. I'm tired of wearing a Fitbit, or glasses, or these different things people have to look at, keep up with, break easy etc.

I would be fairly interested if this works without opening my mouth. Like, if you can nail _micro_ tongue movements, it would feel pretty close to thought.

This is very cool, but oddly, the site is TOO focused on the user problem being solved to the extent that it feels like snake oil. The issue is that this is contrary to people's experience of what is possible, so without discussing WHY you can do this, it looks like a scam or vaporware.

Pretty cool! My only wish is that all this kind of work didn't gravitate toward glasses or assume glasses are the default thing-on-your-face now. 3/4 of humans don't wear them, and even some of us blind bats hate them enough that we endure the hassle of contact lenses!

If no one wants to dictate to their phones or computers in public, surely they don't want to do this (looking like they are talking without making any noise) in public?

This is amazing, brilliant idea and nice execution. Are you concerned about Meta or any other established smart glasses players potentially copying such an idea?

Should really just be like a leap motion device on the desk, glasses are so gimmicky and aren't gonna fly for people with prescriptions (a large set of people in-front of computers all day)

Are there any associated benchmarks with this? Like how accurate is this technology for different types of facial structures, sentences or languages?

Neat! I don't like talking to my computer (audibly or not), but that's a cool demo.

I wonder if we could eventually end up with a "throat muscle" version where people learn to talk a new way without having to move the visible mouth muscles too.

Really neat tech! Just curious, how much did you leverage AI during the development? This seems like the type of neat tech that we should expect more and more from wielding our new tools well.

Spent 30 seconds scrolling down to try to figure out what this is. Eventually clicked away from the site because it was taking too long to get to the point. I'm sure it's great and I understand it's something to do with glasses and subvocalizations, but consider a one sentence contextualization at the top of the page.

this is super cool. I did some digging about current research on avsr using video and lip point cloud movement a while back. found projects like https://github.com/amanvirparhar/chaplin but this seems more promising!

I've thought about learning sign language in order to communicate with the computer in a not-super-annoying way. Your solution... much more realistic. Cheers.

I use the Vekta. I tried whispering and it doesn't feel right.

Throat mics don't work at all - see reviews online.

This is a different approach, so I am cautiously optimistic.

Are there any health risks with this method?

Edit: mostly concerned about RF near my eyes for 8 hours a day.

That is fascinating. How do the radio waves get modulated? Do you think it is possible to use this technique for spying technology, with remote transmitters and receivers intersecting a person's facial anatomy to pick up the details of even a whispered or muttered conversation?

So it's a pair of glasses that can transcribe when you mouth words silently? I still don't know how it works, they say no cameras and it works with noise so I assume sort sort of reverse bone conducting?

Very cool. I suspect you guys will get scooped up by a bigger player working on smart glasses soon.

Fantastic!

Just preordered.

What languages do you support? (English is fine, but any others?)

Category: A product, that's obviously super useful, as long as it will work.

I wonder if in a couple of years we gonna have some teeth implant that will capture sounds to our devices.

Great work!

Really like seeing the early prototypes here, and would love to see more on how the RF tech works on the website.

Are you able to patent it?

This is super cool. I think it's the first piece of additional hardware I've even considered pre-ordering.

The tech sounds cool, but my guess is this product might work for anyone whose text to command ratio is very high. If the formatting and commanding are the main tasks, then this product would be more of a distraction for a fast typist.

Regarding the website, you should lead with product, its details, rather than founders shown in 360 degrees from various vantage points. It is distracting and frankly irritating.

Just scroll normally!

Reminds me of the Leap Motion I preordered

Does the model require internet access, or is it running entirely locally?

God do I hate websites that make you scroll to go through an animation, why do people still do this

If you're selling a physical product, using AI to model your product seems like a really bad idea. You have no idea if the product actually fits on their faces.

Calling it early - this is a scam. There's no way they're going to deliver that product, in that form factor, by Q1 2027.

Q1 2027- unlikely

Infuriating website UX, you really must add the scrollbar back. Apple do shiny things like this but they know you can't get rid of the scrollbar and piss people off trying to look at information

Why do you hurt communicating your very cool product with an annoying and counter intuitive scroll experience?

And after some time I could not figure out what this is?

Put this part: " building smart glasses that let you talk to your computer without talking out loud. You can mouth words silently and discreetly and the glasses decode them to text at the speed of speech."

right at the top and maybe show someone actually doing that instead of hiding behind cryptic marketing.

Also, the product looks great.

Get your words out of the way 'say what it is'.

Very amazing tech though

“Foundation models” I feel like this has lost all meaning? Can’t you just say “we train models on this data”?

Website is shit, "how it works" tells you nothing much useful about how it works, and I assume there is some custom hardware (as described in the post above) but nowhere on the website I could see this actually said, and therefore zero indication of the size of the interface electronics etc etc

Really cool piece of tech! Languages supported rn? English only?

Let's go! Love the idea. Like the analog to bone conduction earbuds. Just please don't turn into WisprFlow where they route the voice metadata, unbeknownst to many, to a third party partner who stores and mines it for who-knows-what. Good luck fellas.

This is such a weird thing that I can't wait to try it out. I don't know, like it's so crazy that it has to be good

How have the glasses been received? I don't understand why they're required, is it only to have a consistent mount point for the radar sensor, relative to the face? Have you thought about a throat mic?

There is a product by Subtle called Voicebuds that allows for super silent dictation. Looks like the product is not available for purchase yet, but I would prefer to have earbuds over glasses.

https://www.subtle.co

Preordered!

Can we use RF for other medical applications? As an anesthesiologist, we do nerve blocks before surgeries or for pain. One rough indicator that it's working is muscle paralysis. Also similar for botox.

Very interested.

Apple recently a purchased a company with seemingly equivalent technical capabilities:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/apple-qai-ac...

Hope you guys are well-positioned patent-wise.

Watched the demo video… and if this is satire: incredibly well executed

Much respect for actual innovation. I hope you get filthy rich.

From your comments it seems to reach this point you tried at least open source lip reading software, IMUs, variant antenna mounting strategies, various frequencies, and then gathered training data. You articulated strongly why the product is desirable and why the failed modes were dead-ends. I hope you can deliver on your pre-orders and are able to scale and/or sell the IP for a strong exit.

This is so dumb

There is a long way from a prototype to production. Remember Google Glasses, Oculus, Meta Rayban, Apple Vision Pro?

All of them are visionary and we would think that ppl gonna like them…

Well… ordinary people want boring tech.

This will be similar with whispering to glasses… Visionaries will like it… and return to missionary (boring) s*x (I hope that I don’t get a ban.)

Myself, I would buy these glasses immediately. But I would hate them as well as I would think I am insane (who wants to talk to yourself?).

Edit: Dang replied. I wish all the best to the team behind “whisper glasses”. It is amazing. Connect it with ElevenLabs and you rule the world. (Previous: It wasn’t meant a hate speech.)

Talk about over engineering a problem! If typing speed is an issue guess what, humans can train themselves to type really fast on a keyboard.

FYI, the subvocal.company site is unscrollable with a mouse wheel in WebKit browsers on Mac (Safari, DDG, Kagi Orion), though the touchpad will work. No issues elsewhere (Mac non-WebKit, Win11, Ubuntu)

What's wrong with human connection and speaking. :( I feel like the isolation of this modern world is lame.

All of the images, including the glasses, are AI generated.

Anyone who preorders - you are getting scammed.

Pangram: https://www.pangram.com/history/images/614ffe91-8ba9-4d3c-b1...

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EDIT: I find talking in that manner in a public setup to be awkward and unpleasant, maybe that's just me.

That said, I think the idea of having a private walkie-talkie that connects on its own frequency for large crowded spaces to be very cool