Subvocal smart glasses turn silent mouth movements into text

The Subvocal Company has unveiled smart glasses called Subvocal that let users enter text by moving their mouths silently, with the company targeting a first-quarter 2027 shipment at 699 dollars.

In a promotional video, a user moved their mouth slightly without making a sound; the text appeared on a PC screen and the sentence was recognized correctly, according to GIGAZINE.

The company explained on Hacker News that Subvocal passes Bluetooth-like radio waves through the tongue, lips and soft palate to read mouth movements and decode them into text. It said the device works with the mouth closed and needs only an inward, speaking-like movement.

Because the glasses do not use a microphone, the company says they can be used in quiet places and are unaffected by surrounding conversation or traffic noise. The system also does not rely on camera-based tracking.

Silent-speech input is designed to activate only when the user intends it, so everyday conversation is not automatically transcribed. The company says it is decoding silent free speech in real time and expects accuracy to improve with more data collection and model scaling.