Re:Show HN: Subvocal – Talk to your computer without making ...
by aarushyadav on Monday November 02, 2026 @09:06PM
(#50347081)
Tbh we haven't tried internal speech on outsiders yet, just the two of us and one of our employees. We were able to solve it on that small set, so it's technically solvable with enough user specific internal speech personalization data. But the amount of time it took us to learn the behavior comfortably is a bit too high for us to focus on it as a key feature we have from the beginning. In a few months though we will start collecting larger scale data on internal speech as well.
Additionally, we found that you can mouth words discreetly enough / with no exaggerated movements, such that people sitting around you would likely not notice unless they were staring at you, which seems to be good enough, as a start at least.
Re:Show HN: Subvocal – Talk to your computer without making ...
by mrandish on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @12:19AM
(#50348389)
> a bit too high for us to focus on it as a key feature we have from the beginning.
Makes sense, and kind of what I expected. It'll be interesting to see how it develops going forward.
> people sitting around you would likely not notice
That's what I was hoping. Doing my little try at internal speech, it felt like if I articulated close to fully, it might look like I was vigorously chewing :-). Glad to hear there's sensitivity headroom to scale down the degree of articulation. Thanks for the info!
In the video Dave just finished the training mode and is silently moving his lips, which seems pretty natural to me. I just spent a minute trying to do 'internal speech' (as many elements of speech as possible with lips closed). It does feel weird and seems like internal speech is probably providing a fair bit less signal for the system to sense (in both signal freq and amplitude). I realized I can't guess at how much articulation is 'enough' without feedback.
Based on that I'm guessing adapting to internal speech might follow a bit different path than silent speech, which seems more like 'just do what you already do silently'. Extrapolating, I expect training internal speech might involve more real-time feedback to help the user find the right degree and kind of articulation.
I realize you're still in the prototype phase but I assume an increasing number of people are getting multiple longer sessions. Do new users advance from silent to internal speech quickly and stay there? I'd be surprised as, intuitively, 'Silent -> Internal' seems like a bigger step than 'Normal -> Silent'.
Separately, if I was using it daily, I can imagine wanting to evolve a kind of micro-expression shorthand for 'Yes', 'No', 'Pause' and 'Stop', since two humans naturally evolve similar non-verbal queues over time. Vocalizing words is flexible and expressive but not efficient. It would seem odd if an intelligent, adaptive 'invisible friend' living on my face for years didn't adapt to me and me to it. Are you guys thinking in those directions for the future?