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

280 points - today at 5:16 PM


Hi HN, we're Aarush and Arnav from The Subvocal Company (YC F26). We’re 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.

Here's a video of Dave from YC trying it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QdX1eObVYI

(Edit: you don't actually have to move your lips or even open your mouth for this to work! Since the RF can see inside your mouth the system can be fine tuned on "internal speech". This isn't the automatic tongue movements that occur when "thinking" words to yourself, but more like mouthing with your lips closed. It's a bit weird to do, but with practice, we have been able to get it down pretty well.)

Arnav and I were studying CS at Georgia Tech at the beginning of the year, with no experience in silent speech or sensing. We were both AI-native builders and power users of Wispr Flow. What bugged us was not being able to use these tools in the library (or an office) or in public. At Stanford’s TreeHacks in February, we decided to build the most technically ridiculous thing we could think of. We’d read about AlterEgo, a silent speech system out of MIT’s Media Lab, and wanted to recreate it in 36 hours. We built a crude prototype, sticking EMG electrodes onto my face:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mwhv5HZMz3UTevdrgwS5O7g2jWV...

We got it to kind of work at a letter level in a very janky way. It wasn’t good enough to win the hackathon, but convinced us to go all in. The first time I typed a sentence without anyone noticing, I felt the magic of the technology.

We quickly realized EMG (reading muscle electrical signals) wouldn’t work:

- Signal changes due to sweat

- Electrical interference

- Placement variability

- Most importantly, no one wants to stick electrodes onto their face!!

So we switched to RF and built the glasses you see now. They emit radio waves, similar to Bluetooth, that pass through your face. As they cross the tongue, lips and soft palate, they’re modulated by silent mouthing. We train foundation models on this data to decode these perturbations to text.

Despite prior academic research, getting this to work was a huge engineering challenge. First we built an extremely low noise RF sensing stack. Then we had to place antennas so their fields overlapped maximally with the articulators. Our first attempt on glasses failed completely, so we reverted to old habits and taped antennas on our face:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ks0dS0eZiTV9EqSFsyB_w5BBjpc...

Since taping antennas consistently in the same spot and angle was hard, we created this weird but effective head rig to hold them in place:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rhzNFpdDzr7oHk0isFY70dkoV4C...

This worked, but obviously wasn’t a product yet. So we worked deep in simulations to design glasses that could hold the antennas.

That evolved into our design now, with antennas embedded within the frames. Once we established there was a signal, the next hurdle was cross-user generalization. Everyone’s facial anatomy, and hence RF signal patterns, are vastly different. We tried algorithmic workarounds but realized the only lever was to massively scale pretraining data.

So that’s what we did. We set up booths in our office and paid people to read prompts wearing our glasses, to pretrain our models on. This produced a beautiful scaling curve, with errors falling quickly as we scaled our dataset and cross-user performance becoming genuinely compelling (as you see in the video above; Dave only had a short 20-sentence calibration).

We always heard about building things from first principles but never understood it before this. We tried tackling it top down but completely failed. Only when we broke each component (the antenna, electronics, ML) down to its fundamentals to understand and optimize it did we get it to work really well.

Over the next few months we’re continuing R&D to turn our prototype glasses into the slick product on our website and ship in Q1 2027. We’re also scaling up our dataset to improve performance on edge cases.

For anyone who loves voice dictation but hates using it around people, we’ve opened preorders for our first batch of 500 units, with a $200 discount off the final price. Allocation is running out quickly, so get yours at https://subvocal.co/preorder!

Source

Comments

vessenes today at 6:42 PM
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!

sourpanda today at 5:59 PM
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!
d1sxeyes today at 7:11 PM
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.

growt today at 6:46 PM
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
howunfortunate today at 6:39 PM
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...

gh5000 today at 5:59 PM
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?
0x4e today at 6:44 PM
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.

--

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!

avree today at 5:55 PM
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.
collabs today at 6:16 PM
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.

columk today at 7:22 PM
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.
thisisauserid today at 5:34 PM
I'm more looking for the Jane from Speaker for the Dead version. In-ear device that can hear and feel the subvocalization.
johnhamlin today at 5:53 PM
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!
willwade today at 6:52 PM
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..
BrokenCogs today at 7:26 PM
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?
kmoser today at 6:23 PM
You can have a silent conversation with someone else wearing the device? This does not bode well for casinos.
retromario today at 7:26 PM
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?
PebblesRox today at 5:37 PM
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.
joshdavham today at 7:23 PM
Are there any associated benchmarks with this? Like how accurate is this technology for different types of facial structures, sentences or languages?
theturtletalks today at 5:31 PM
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.

joshstrange today at 6:03 PM
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.
rdiddly today at 7:08 PM
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!
jdironman today at 6:35 PM
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.
tomhow today at 5:40 PM
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?
monkeydust today at 6:17 PM
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/

uzbit today at 7:01 PM
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.
json_hero today at 6:17 PM
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)
s3graham today at 5:32 PM
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.

clkao today at 6:17 PM
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!
OhMeadhbh today at 5:38 PM
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.
kenferry today at 6:15 PM
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.
catoc today at 7:16 PM
Fantastic!

Just preordered.

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

TechSquidTV today at 5:43 PM
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.
adamsmark today at 5:42 PM
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.

mcbishop today at 5:33 PM
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.
smokel today at 6:07 PM
Are there any health risks with this method?

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

csh0 today at 6:49 PM
Very cool. I suspect you guys will get scooped up by a bigger player working on smart glasses soon.
popap today at 5:46 PM
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?
sschueller today at 6:06 PM
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?
mmaths today at 6:35 PM
I wonder if in a couple of years we gonna have some teeth implant that will capture sounds to our devices.
lukko today at 6:26 PM
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?

MPSimmons today at 6:25 PM
This is super cool. I think it's the first piece of additional hardware I've even considered pre-ordering.
jstummbillig today at 5:38 PM
Category: A product, that's obviously super useful, as long as it will work.
mirmor23 today at 5:59 PM
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.

deleted today at 6:26 PM
ideasphere today at 5:52 PM
Just scroll normally!
polartx today at 6:10 PM
Reminds me of the Leap Motion I preordered
ipsum2 today at 7:05 PM
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.

skilning today at 6:11 PM
Does the model require internet access, or is it running entirely locally?
ciefa today at 5:48 PM
God do I hate websites that make you scroll to go through an animation, why do people still do this
alexgoodhart today at 7:01 PM
Q1 2027- unlikely
deleted today at 7:11 PM
sMarsIntruder today at 7:06 PM
Really cool piece of tech! Languages supported rn? English only?
airbreather today at 6:41 PM
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
replete today at 6:08 PM
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
bluegatty today at 5:54 PM
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

desireco42 today at 6:59 PM
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
dogscatstrees today at 6:30 PM
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.
popupeyecare today at 6:38 PM
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.

proee today at 6:00 PM
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

paisawalla today at 5:33 PM
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?
vibranium today at 6:51 PM
“Foundation models” I feel like this has lost all meaning? Can’t you just say “we train models on this data”?
mrtesthah today at 6:12 PM
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.

capl today at 6:13 PM
Watched the demo video… and if this is satire: incredibly well executed
uhutiik today at 7:11 PM
This is so dumb
contingencies today at 6:40 PM
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.

fowlie today at 5:33 PM
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.
settsu today at 6:01 PM
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)
ipsum2 today at 7:14 PM
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...

hippycruncher22 today at 5:49 PM
What's wrong with human connection and speaking. :( I feel like the isolation of this modern world is lame.
emveeoh today at 6:46 PM
[dead]
deleted today at 6:45 PM
railgunmerlin today at 6:44 PM
[dead]
ziiinq today at 6:09 PM
[dead]
georgestones today at 5:59 PM
[dead]
deleted today at 5:16 PM
hmokiguess today at 5:30 PM
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

sixtyj today at 6:04 PM
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.)