Google reportedly training AI to ‘hear’ when you’re sick

Stevina Francis

1 month ago

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Google’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) branch is reportedly working on software that can detect when a person is becoming sick based on sound.

The ‘tech’ referred to “bioacoustics,” — a field that merges biology and sounds, which is said to help researchers gain insights into how pathogen presence affects human sound.

According to a Bloomberg report, the search engine giant has created an AI model that uses sound signals to “predict early signs of disease.”

Google’s bioacoustic AI model is called HeAR (Heath Acoustic Representations) Mashable reports.

It’s understood that HeAR was trained on 300 million, “two-second audio samples that include coughs, sniffles, sneezes, and breathing patterns.”

These audio clips were pulled from non-copyrighted, publicly available content from platforms like YouTube.

It’s reported that HeAr’s bioacoustics has the potential to offer “near-imperceptible clues” to signs of illness that can assist health professionals in diagnosing patients [remotely.]

While the software is set to be ways off from “coming to market”, it’s being touted as a massive alternative for persons in remote or underserved locations to access quality healthcare.