‘Ear as the new wrist’: Starkey launches AI hearing aid with personal assistant-like capabilities

“Think of the ear as the new wrist,” says Brandon Sawalich, president and CEO of Starkey. He was speaking of the hearing technology company’s fall 2024 launch of Edge AI, which incorporates hearing assistance with additional health tracking, such as fall detection and balance assessment. “Where Starkey’s really driving the hearing aid is to wearable tech. Along with hearing assistance, you’ll have your own personal assistant,” Sawalich said.

Sawalich also views Edge AI’s hearing aid function as a health component. “Hearing health is important,” he said. “It’s just not something people think about until it’s gone.”

Starkey, founded in 1967 and headquartered in Eden Prairie, began working to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into its products with the 2017 hiring of Achin Bhowmik, who formerly worked with AI at Intel Corp., as chief technology officer, Sawalich said. “It was moonshot thinking, because in our industry, in the past, say 10 years ago, improvements in technology were just little tiny things here and there that can make some people hear better through the technology available, and I was tired of the incremental thinking,” Sawalich said. 

Starkey launched the first hearing aid with AI and integrated sensors, Livio AI, in 2018. Sawalich calls that the first generation. At the time, he said, “They could only do so much that technology allows. We’ve been working on Edge AI, really, since 2018.” In the intervening years, Starkey launched Evolv AI in 2021 and Genesis AI, which makes over 80 million automatic adjustments per hour to mimic how the brain processes sounds, in 2023. 

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Processing sounds, keeping the brain healthy

Edge AI, Sawalich said, can be appropriate for people experiencing a spectrum of hearing loss issues, from mild to profound. Each hearing aid is personalized to the patient by a hearing healthcare professional and then, Sawalich said, the patient can choose from programs that prioritize best sound, enhanced speech or noise reduction options. “Through our app, in conjunction with the circuit and AI, the patient can choose the environment they’re in, and the AI is learning and adapting,” Sawalich said. 

Compared to previous generations of AI-enhanced hearing aids, Edge AI, Starkey says in its press release materials, provides an additional 6 decibels (dB) of noise reduction in low-level noise situations and up to 13 dB of signal-to-noise ratio improvement in noisy environments.

Company literature explains that the AI was trained on millions of sounds to distinguish between those that are important and relevant, such as conversation, and those that can be distracting. Traditional hearing aids, Sawalich said, essentially consisted of an amplifier and a microphone, with programming for certain frequencies. The AI within Edge AI, in contrast, can automatically scan and adjust to the different environments a person might enter in a day, such as meetings, shopping and restaurants. “If they’re in a noisy restaurant, out to dinner, the AI will adjust automatically to a reduced noise mode if the patient desires, where the clanking of the dishes and everything all around is lowered, and it knows that the person wants to hear better conversation and not be overwhelmed with noises from all around,” Sawalich said.  

Edge AI hearing aids accomplish this through something called the G2 Neuro Processing Unit, fully integrated into the device’s chip. It uses artificial intelligence to more closely mimic the human brain. Edge AI uses this in its always-on sound managing capacity to achieve 30% more accuracy in detecting speech than previous generations of Starkey hearing aids, according to press materials. 

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“We have to find the sounds that people are missing,” Sawalich said. The processor picks up missed sounds and sends them as signals to the patient’s brain to achieve the maximum hearing possible for that person, he said. 

Sawalich talks about the neural activity of processing sounds in terms of keeping the brain fit and healthy. Although some studies have linked hearing loss with dementia, “the one thing that isn’t talked about is loneliness,” Sawalich said. “People with hearing loss start drawing inward, because they slowly start moving away from the conversation, the parties and everything. Improving somebody’s hearing is also making sure that their brain is as fit as possible and giving them the opportunity to be the best that they could be each and every day.” 

Fall prevention, other health tracking capabilities

Edge AI also offers a balance assessment for fall prevention. “Our hearing keeps us balanced because, subconsciously, we can hear our feet on the rug or whatever it might be,” Sawalich said. “(For) people with hearing loss, balance is a major issue, because you miss those little things.” Sensors within the hearing aid monitor a person’s walk and gait to determine a fall risk, evaluating, for instance, whether someone is starting to hunch their shoulders. It then provides a report to the patient or, if they choose, a family member. 

The Edge AI hearing aids also retain the fall detection system from earlier iterations of Starkey AI hearing aids. The patient can designate up to three contacts who will receive an alert via text if the person wearing the hearing aid takes a fall. “We started with detection, but really we’re adding a lot of features now where we can start working on areas of prevention,” Sawalich said. 

Also built into the Edge AI hearing aids are additional health tools, like step and activity tracking capability, and medication reminders. The activity tracking includes indoor biking, walking, running and aerobics. Sawalich wants to add more in the future that are focused on overall health and wellbeing. Possibilities he mentioned include heart rate or blood oxygen monitoring, or even mental health. “Imagine the hearing aid monitoring the tones of somebody’s voice and analyzing (so that) it can tell you what their mood is, so kind of your updated mood ring. Are they depressed? Are they feeling isolated? Are they engaged?” Sawalich said. “If I look three to five years out, it’s pretty phenomenal.”

‘A personal assistant in your ear’

Some of the functions of Edge AI seem similar to what might be found in a smartwatch, including the health tracking, reminders and capability to stream calls. It can stream audio from other sources, too. In a scenario where an Edge AI wearer is at a restaurant, Sawalich said, “If they want, they could stream the Vikings game to their hearing aids.” And the person with whom they’re dining wouldn’t know. An accompanying product, the Edge TV Streamer, allows low energy (LE) audio streaming from televisions to LE-enabled hearing aids like Edge AI. 

Additionally, the Edge AI hearing aid is capable of translating more than 70 languages, when used with the My Starkey app on a smartphone and a Bluetooth connection. “I can pick the language, where I’m at, who I’m going to be talking to. And then, just like you do with voice-to-text or Siri, it translates seamlessly and it’ll talk into my hearing aid and tell me what the person’s saying,” Sawalich said. The user can also speak into the app to create translated text for the other person to read. 

“We’re thinking big and thinking beyond just a hearing aid,” added Sawalich, who has been with Starkey for 30 years. Sawalich says Starkey has big dreams for what can be accomplished with hearing aid technology, both with Edge AI and in the future.  

Making reference to the AI virtual assistant used by Iron Man/Tony Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films, Sawalich said, “Think of it as J.A.R.V.I.S. in your ear, where it’s your own personal assistant that’s helping you make your day just a little bit easier, or a little bit more successful at your job or more enjoyable with your family.”