Your Nvidia GPU could one day make your AirPod calls sound better

A small group of computer science and engineering students at the University of Washington have designed a new set of wireless earbuds that use AI-powered technology to provide a better standard of background noise cancellation during phone calls.

The earbuds – which the students have dubbed ClearBuds, an excellent name in our opinion – work by monitoring two separate audio streams from the microphones on the left and right buds to create a spatial audio soundscape, then sending the data to a phone which runs a pair of neural networks to clean up background sounds.

The first neural network suppresses any sound that isn’t the caller’s voice, while the second amplifies and improves the clarity of that voice. The result is a significant improvement in the removal of background noise, which the students found to be 6.94 dB better than the noise cancellation of the Apple AirPods Pro.

Both neural networks were trained over the course of one day by utilizing the AI deep learning capabilities of Nvidia’s Titan desktop GPUs. Nvidia has been keen to emphasize the potential of AI for improving gaming via DLSS, but also how we use technology in all areas of life, recently setting up a new program for businesses to begin implementing AI tech at the enterprise level. AMD is even getting involved, despite previous comments to the contrary.

Analysis: Awesome tech that will need an industry shift to become useful

At this point, the majority of wireless earbuds implement some level of active noise cancellation (ANC), which works but monitoring external sounds via a microphone and creating an inverted sound wave signature to cancel them out. Some are pretty good, but this new technology could lead to a leap forward in ANC performance.