Alphabet’s Moonshot Factory is apparently developing a portable device that can enlarge your hearing. According to a report by , the company’s X-Laboratory is working on a project called Wolverine. Since 2018, the team has been manufacturing several prototypes of an in-ear device that can help the wearer isolate a specific voice in a pressure chamber. Due to the number of microphones involved, early prototypes covered the entire ear, but more recent ones have become smaller. The best analog is the AI-enhanced hearing aids that announced a startup called last fall. As you can see in the video below, Facebook and Oculus are also working on something similar in public.
A spokesman for X said Insider the company is investigating the future of hearings, but declined to provide details about the project. Whether Wolverine will see the light of day is an open question. The people Insider spoke, was adamant that the project should develop to include more than one device and a one-time case before Alphabet committed to commercialization. And if that’s one thing Alphabet wants to avoid, it’s another Google Glass. The wearable debut was in 2013 with great fanfare (who could forget that the company showed off at I / O 2012), but eventually relegated to an enterprise product after the general public turned against it.