If you’ve ever wanted to sneak in a snack during a work call, but were worried you’d go hungry, you may have your answer.
Available starting today, Doritos has released something called “Doritos Silent,” an AI-powered crunch canceling app.
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How do you train an AI to counteract a crisis? According to the company, Doritos had about 500 participants smash a chip (official Doritos, of course) into a microphone 10 times. These 5,000 crunches were fed into an AI that was trained to identify what it sounded like to ensure it separated out the noise. They then mixed those sounds with the sounds of people talking to simulate what it would sound like if someone was munching while talking.
The app is aimed at gamers who communicate through headsets for hours at a time, but it claims to work with anything that can use a microphone, including Zoom, Google Voice, and Discord. Once the app is installed, it basically works by replacing your default microphone. To take advantage of this feature, you’ll need to go into the settings of the program you’re using and switch your microphone to “Doritos Silent.”
According to the company, any crunchy snack will work, not just Doritos.
This is stupid, but I had to test it myself. After installing the program, I launched Google Voice and made a call to my cell phone. Under normal circumstances, certainly my chip crunch would quickly become annoying. However, when I turned it on, the sound disappeared. I tried several snacks, but they all resulted in complete silence during calls.
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I tried to trick the program with what I felt was a pretty convincing fake crunch sound, but the AI ​​didn’t believe me and left the sound alone.
Unfortunately, the app is currently only available for Windows PCs, but other devices will be supported as well. Equally unfortunately, there’s still no AI answer for face-stuffing videos during Zoom calls. But that’s what the “camera off” button is for.