Alphabet’s lunar factory is reportedly developing a wearable device that can increase your hearing. According to a , the company’s X lab is working on a project code-named Wolverine. Since 2018, the team has produced several prototypes of an in-ear device that can help the user isolate a specific voice in a crowded room. Due to the number of microphones involved, the first prototypes covered the entire ear, but the newer ones became smaller. The closest analog would be the AI-enhanced hearing aids, which a startup named announced last fall. Facebook and Oculus, as you can see in the video below, are also publicly working on something similar.
A spokesman for X said Insider the company is “exploring the future of the audience”, but declined to offer details about the project. Whether Wolverine will see the light of day is an open question. People Insider we spoke with certainty that the project needed to evolve to cover more than one device and a single use case before Alphabet committed to commercialization. And it seems, if there is something Alphabet wants to avoid, it’s another Google Glass. The wearable debuted with a lot of fanfare in 2013 (who could forget what the company exhibited at I / O 2012), but ended up being relegated to a corporate product after the general public turned against it.