US Patent Issued on March 11 for "Systems, devices, and methods for enhancing user privacy and/or user control over audio-activated devices" (Massachusetts Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,249,329, issued on March 11.

"Systems, devices, and methods for enhancing user privacy and/or user control over audio-activated devices" was invented by Gregory O'Keeffe (Boston), Brian Dutton (Boston) and George Rice (Boston).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Systems and devices may receive an ambient noise signal and use that ambient noise signal to generate a distorted ambient noise signal that may be provided to a speaker that is proximate to a microphone of the audio-activated device so that the speaker may project sound corresponding to the distorted ambient noise into the microphone of the audio-activated device so that, for example,...