These Tiny Earphones Translate Between 15 Languages Using AI
Acer AI TransBuds
Acer
Language translation is one of the more compelling uses for AI and machine learning tech, and Acer has built it into a pair of earphones, the Acer AI TransBuds. Well, sort of.
The Acer AI TransBuds look much like a fairly ordinary pair of open ear headphones, one of the most recent design trends in wireless pairs, but they are made for AI-powered 'two-way voice translation.'
And the idea is only one person needs to wear the Acer AI TransBuds. That doesn't entirely make sense until you hear these earphones also rely on a wirelessly connected phone or tablet, which can display the 'live captioning and transcription' results, perhaps while the wearer gets an audio translation.
It's this connected device that presumably does all of the real work of translation — most likely via cloud compute — as a pair of earphones is unlikely to be able to hold the processing and battery power required for full on-device translation for some time still.
The Acer AI TransBuds have tiny 50mAh batteries, and include a charging case just like a regular true wireless pair. They support Bluetooth 5.4 and have an ear hook design, which is necessary because the actual bud parts don't have an IEM-style tip or even the classic style of earbud designed to rest behind the ear's tragus.
That's deliberate, to stop them from blocking you hearing what the other person is saying, even if you can't understand them.
Acer says the AI TransBuds support 15 languages at present. And while these are not specified, they are described as 'major languages spoken across Asia, the Americas, and Europe.'
The Acer AI TransBuds are not quite as revolutionary as they may seem from a one-sentence description, but it is refreshing to see a household name take on what is still quite a niche area of tech.
They might be compared to the Vasco Translator E1 earbuds or the Timekettle M3 Translation Earbuds. All three pairs operate using the same concept, pairing to a smartphone app in order to provide translation.
This also means the real worth of the Acer AI TransBuds is in the part Acer has talked little about so far, the software.
Acer also has not yet revealed when the AI TransBuds are planned for a release, or where they will be marketed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
33 minutes ago
- Forbes
Bringing Tech To Game Day At The New England Patriots' Stadium
In April, the Kraft Group—which owns the New England Patriots, MLS' New England Revolution and Gillette Stadium—signed a five-year agreement with tech infrastructure provider NWN to transform the tech framework for the Kraft Group's facilities, including Gillette Stadium and a new training facility for the Patriots. I talked to Kraft Group CIO Michael Israel and NWN CEO Jim Sullivan in April about the challenges of bringing the latest technology infrastructure to a place like Gillette Stadium, and how big facilities with a multitude of uses can plan for the future. This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity. It was excerpted in the Forbes CIO newsletter. Why is it important to partner with NWN to bring upgrades to Gillette Stadium and the Kraft Group's other event facilities? Israel: With NWN as a partner, everything we do within the Kraft organization from an IT perspective is on a life cycle: When we buy something, this is how long we expect to use it. It's become a necessary component within IT because you want to have a predictive budget. It's no longer 'set it and forget it.' You have to know that I'm going to keep this Wi-Fi system for five years. That way, you can at least let management know that while we're spending this amount of money now, it's going to come back up four or five years later. Creating that expectation, long-term budget and continued investment in it avoids the surprise. That being said, we have been looking at what the next five years brings to the Kraft organization, and in partnership with NWN, we have a whole bunch of things that are lining up together. That, plus new facilities, really made us sit back and say, 'We need to be looking at this beyond the typical 18 to 24 months of what we do for budgeting.' We have a new football practice facility that's being built as we speak, which comes live in April of '26, which brings about its own components for networking. We then have the FIFA World Cup coming in June and July of '26. Coming out of that, we have new network and Wi-Fi refreshes. We'll have to make determinations of [the best Wi-Fi speed and capacity]. By the time we're done with all that, we have another firewall refresh that comes forward. And then in the midst of all that, if that's not enough, we're potentially building another stadium north of Boston, in Everett, Massachusetts, for our soccer team. Kraft Group CIO Michael Israel and NWN CEO Jim Sullivan All of this together from a core infrastructure perspective, we sat with Jim [Sullivan] and [CMO] Andrew [Gilman] and their team and said: This is everything we have on our docket for five years. I need an organization that can help us strategically plan, make decisions based on what's the right choice for all of this. We're making a commitment now that's going to go five to seven years into the future, and I need that platform in place because what we're doing functionally is rapidly changing at the same time. There's base items that are happening, like as we build our football practice facility and you go into a room, I can control the light, or the temperature or the ambient settings in conference rooms from our Cisco platforms. But if I enter the room, what's going to happen on our IP TV systems? How are we [working with] the endpoints that are hanging off of the network, to create a better experience for the players that are coming in? As you bring AI into the mix, you're talking about things that are entirely different and looking and saying, 'How can I take data that's historically sitting there and use it to my advantage?' We're looking at the stadium itself. If you're a ticket holder and you're walking up to the gate, what's the last thing you want to do? Wait in line for 20 minutes to get into the stadium, wait in line for 20 minutes to get a cheeseburger. One of the projects we're currently investigating is building a digital wallet system, where I walk up and, similar to a Clear lane at an airport, we can do opt-in facial recognition tied to your digital wallet, hook into Ticketmaster, shred your ticket. You don't have to take anything out. Walk up to a concession line. Fast pass line, sees your face, hits your credit card, checks your ID for age verification, logs into the loyalty system and says, 'You just bought two cheeseburgers,' and you're in and out. Those are the types of things that will change a stakeholder's perception of, 'Gee, that was a pleasurable experience. The folks who choose to wait in line are waiting 20 minutes for a cheeseburger. I just did it in a minute.' That will differentiate us. People will say, 'Maybe I don't want to sit home and watch a 75-inch TV. Maybe I do want to come to the stadium and experience it.' Those are the challenges that we are faced with. It's how can I use the network and put solutions on top of it to speed transactions, to get more things done and to make us more efficient. How do you come up with what you want to accomplish, and how do you figure out what kind of infrastructure is needed to make it happen? Israel: We have our Monster Jam [this weekend] at the stadium. On Saturday, I'll be walking around the stadium engaging. Gillette is one of the few stadiums in the country in which we own and self-operate our stadium. It's our security staff, our concession staff. I am walking around watching how our fans engage with us. How are our systems being used? Where are they inefficient? Where are they doing their job? How can we improve that experience? Guests will come up to me and say, 'How do I get to the gate?' 'How do I get to my suite?' 'Where's the nearest bathroom?' When they're asking me these things, that's registering in my mind: They don't have that information today. When you have these types of events, they're new users. You want them to have a positive experience because that's your lead in to a potential soccer season ticket holder or future Patriots season ticket holder. But even when you get to the Patriot season ticket holders, what can we do to enhance that experience? It's seeing how our guests experience things, what we're doing right, what we're doing wrong, and not sitting back and saying, 'I'm good. I'm going to go watch the game.' I've been here six years. I think I've seen 15 minutes of one football game. On a football day, I'll generally do about 30,000 steps walking the stadium, watching what's going on. The other side of the coin is what do we do from a technology perspective, looking at what do I need to do to ensure that I have connectivity, and what devices are now connecting to the networks that hadn't in the past? The system that waters the field is an IoT system that's attached to our network. If it's not connecting, it's not watering the field, and we don't know what's going on. We have to allow for connectivity, secure that connectivity, and make sure that that connectivity is reliable. We constantly do surveys after a winter to say, what got impacted by the winter? Do I have Wi-Fi access points that may be misaligned that need to be looked at? I have FIFA coming in next year. That's like having seven Super Bowls over six weeks here at the stadium. They're going to use my parking lots on the east and west side as fan activation zones. I don't have connectivity there. Working with the NWN team, we have to determine what does FIFA need? How do we light up those areas that when the fans are there, they have connectivity. Their booths can operate, their systems can operate, the fans can get connectivity, and we'll have maybe 50,000 or 60,000 fans in the bowl, but we could have an additional 50,000 people on the campus, and that's not a crowd that we're used to having. What are some of the infrastructure upgrades that you need to make some of these things happen? You're talking about wider connectivity, AI, faster speeds and more reliable facial recognition. Israel: Looking at expanding where that connectivity takes place [starts with] something as simple as evaluating the state of our infrastructure all underneath: the state of our cabling infrastructure, our fiber backbones, all of that is one piece. We look at the bandwidth right now at the stadium for Wi-Fi. We have four 10Gb pipes supplied by Verizon. Is that going to be sufficient? As we look to perform upgrades, we have to turn around and say, what do we predict that rate of growth to be over the next five years? Because what is working today is probably not suited for what's going to happen in two or three years, as we start adding more and more onto the network itself. With NWN, we'll evaluate the vendors. Which technology do we want to put in? Is it a Wi-Fi 6E decision? Is it a Wi-Fi 7 decision? Is it something else? In some cases, we're having to make sure networks aren't stepping on top of each other. Ultimately, it's assessing our current state versus what we expect the future state to be. And at the same time plan for building another stadium. How am I going to support all of that? The relationship with NWN affords us the opportunity to say, 'I can't do this all myself.' My staff is here. I need a vendor who's got the breadth of product knowledge to be able to sit with me and say, 'These are your choices,' and also be a group of folks who have a deep bench that can handle multiple projects with us at the same time. On the NWN side, how do you determine what to do in large facilities like these and how to support current and future needs? Sullivan: NWN, over the past five years, has grown from $250 million to over $1 billion dollars this year, and really expanded this full end-to-end IT infrastructure. The market is changing really fast with AI adding in. For us, it's working with organizations to start with the end state: What's the vision of what we have to have here, what we're trying to drive? And then, what's the required capabilities? Most of these environments, from the application, to the AI, to the infrastructure, to the unified communications, to security all have to be assessed as one holistic solution. Then we put in the right required capabilities from the technology, the services, the overall management, and co-management with Mike's team. We've reached the breadth and scale where we're dealing with organizations where there's hundreds of thousands of people, or states with 50,000 deployments of people and requirements. We can cover end-to-end, but also have the scale to handle a large project that goes across multiple technology domains and supports a smaller event, and all of a sudden it surges to hundreds of thousands of people. Everyone is getting used to [the fact] that customer experience needs to be world-class; there's expectations there. Ultimately, the Wi-Fi is going to be fast, strong and secure. And then going into these new technologies to a real beneficial evolution, where it's creating new user experience, new knowledge, but is also driving a backend that's going to create a lot more capacity demands on the networks, on the infrastructure. You've got to be able to tie it all together. We've got 5,000 enterprise customers across the country: both state and federal, and then large enterprises like the Kraft Group. You're talking about lots of upgrades, but what will fans, players, vendors and employees actually notice? Israel: The fans are going to notice these little things like the changes in applications. We'll have more autonomous concession locations where you can just go in, check into the location, pick your product, walk out. It's frictionless engagement. In other areas, our club and suite locations, we'll see changes in how people can engage the absorption of IP TV: more dynamic programming, potentially changing what an individual suite holder can see or control in those scenarios. We have a stadium that's 20 years old. When you look at some modern stadiums coming in— whether it's SoFi in California or Allegiant in Vegas—[we're looking at] things that they're doing there and saying we need to up our game. Our stadium is used as a convention center year-round. We have events going on almost every day and [we are] making sure that we're in that competitive landscape. When you look at us versus the Massachusetts State Convention Center in Boston, we want to make sure that we're on par. The Kraft family is always looking to invest in the stadium, keep it up to date, modernizing. But at the same time, [Kraft Group President] Jonathan [Kraft] and [CEO] Robert [Kraft] are very entrepreneurial in terms of what do we need to do that's different. Getting that support from ownership is key. I'm walking in with an idea, and maybe sometimes the ideas don't come to fruition, but I'm given the chance to bring things forward and saying, how can we take that step? Players are coming out of colleges and walking into an NFL environment expecting more. That's what our player facility is going to be. How do I take information coming out of the weight rooms and bring that and put that in the coach's hands to say, 'Did Jim do all of his pushups today? How much is he lifting? What are we seeing?' Those types of pieces. Where can AI enhance the teams, whether it's soccer or football? I don't have those answers today. I need to sit with the coaches and say: What would you like to see from that side? How can we brainstorm together? I don't know what a football coach is looking for. Did someone line up incorrectly at the line of scrimmage? Are they doing things a certain way? How can I help them with systems to mentor, train and teach the players? That requires us collaborating. Something as simple as a coach telling me, 'I don't like to sit at the front of the room and just teach. I need to be able to walk around the room. I need to have a tablet in my hand, and as I'm marking on my iPad, I want that to project up on the screen.' These are easy wins, but if I don't hear that, I can't supply that solution. One of the first things you said was that you like to be able to have a predictable plan. So how do you plan and get everything in place for not only the capabilities of today that you want, but the capabilities of tomorrow that no one has even thought about yet? Israel: You're making sure that you have room for growth in the systems that you have and that you have management and measurement systems in place. We have a very well established network operation control system and a security operations control system, in which we can monitor at all times what's the utilization on these systems, what's going on, what's the bandwidth, how are they operating? Then we can predict, 'Maybe I bought this thinking it was going to be a five-year investment, but do I need to do something in the midst of that life cycle?' And that will also happen when all of a sudden, in the middle of a process, we're going to build out a new north end zone and the traffic is going to wind up changing with 30% more than last year. What do I need to do to adjust the network for that? Life changes quickly. Those are the types of things that we adjust accordingly, but as long as my core network is there and it can support this, that's ultimately what we're looking to supply. Sullivan: In technology today, we talk about the application enhancement piece or the user experience piece: if you have the right backbone and infrastructure and support the capacity. This is very different than 15 years ago, when you had to put in some major software program with some of the AI technologies and features. Today, it's learning, and then a new feature could come on that you could just add into the user experience. It's pretty incremental once you have this base plan, and that can be added in on the fly, versus having to do some major infrastructure. It does provide a lot more flexibility, a lot more agility for applications or innovations that didn't exist today, but six months from now they do exist and you can put them in place. What advice do you have for CIOs looking to bring more technology to their facilities, thinking about not only what to do today, but what to do in the future? Israel: Ultimately, it's not just if you build it, they will come. If you're building it, you need to be brainstorming how you're going to use it, and you need to have relationships with all of your stakeholders to understand what's holding them back, what would they like to see? In some cases, they don't know what they don't know, and we have to take these technology discussions, take the technology out of it, and think about how are we going to provide solutions. Sullivan: We did 5,000 distinct deployments last year. The really successful ones are driven with a positive outcome you're trying to get to. Collaboration and a partnership between the two as a seamless team really drives the most success to drive those outcomes.
The Drive
an hour ago
- The Drive
After 66 Years of the Same Old Seatbelt, Volvo Tries Something New
The latest car news, reviews, and features. The electric 2026 Volvo EX60 will be the Swedish automaker's first model to feature its new 'multi-adaptive safety belts.' This new-gen seat belt is designed to more effectively protect you in an accident with a rapid download of impending-crash data from external and internal sensors, optimizing for everything from impact speed to your posture while driving. Modern seat belts are more complicated than they might look—it's not just a ribbon of fabric stapling you into your seat. In any car, pretensioners cinch up on you in extreme deceleration, and load limiters tactically release tension to prevent the belt from hurting you. In most cars made in the last couple of decades, crash sensors communicate with the airbags and speed sensors for some range of load-limiting force adjustment. Volvo holds the honor of having introduced the now-ubiquitous three-point belt to the auto industry. Its 1959 invention is credited to Nils Bohlin. Back then, Volvo described the function of the belt: '[it] effectively, and in a physiologically favorable manner, prevents the body of the strapped person being thrown forward.' That patent was released to the public, and basically every automaker ultimately adopted it. Now, Volvo's taking that same mission, and the systemization of safety equipment, further with the multi-adaptive belt (which, surprisingly, does not have an acronym or cool-sounding proprietary brand name). Building on the idea of pretensioners and load limiters, the EX60's belts will integrate an immense amount of information—about the vehicle and passenger—to more effectively protect whoever's in the seats. An isolated view of the new belt. Volvo From the outside, vehicle direction and speed are factored in. From the inside, the EX60 will include passenger height, weight, and even posture to calculate how best to hold its passengers. 'For example, a larger occupant in a serious crash will receive a higher belt load setting to help reduce the risk of head injury. While a smaller occupant in a milder crash will receive a lower belt load setting to reduce the risk of rib fractures,' Volvo said. While Volvo's traditional seat belt has three different load-limiting profiles it can apply, this new setup has 11. That's certainly a lot more precision in the care of your body in a crash, though it's tough to extrapolate exactly how much injury reduction that will lead to. This quick teaser from Volvo's ES90 reveal video is all we've really seen of the upcoming EX60 so far. Volvo With the EX60, Volvo's promising to continuously evolve the operating scheme of the system as it gathers more real-world crash data, and apply improved logic via over-the-air updates. 'As Volvo Cars gathers more data and insights, the car can improve its understanding of the occupants, new scenarios and response strategies,' the brand stated. I haven't fallen in love with the idea of feeding my telemetry to the company that sold me my car, but this kind of safety innovation does make a case for it. Seat belts are something you never think about until you really need them. And if that ever happens, you're going to want the smartest seat belt ever engineered. Got a tip? Send us a note at tips@
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
A Chinese Firm That Lost In U.S. Trade Court May Get A Do-Over
Under Secretary of Commerce and Director of the US Patent and Trademark Office Kathi Vidal speaks ... More during a visit in Beijing on April 16, 2024. (Photo by Tatan Syuflana / POOL / AFP) (Photo by TATAN SYUFLANA/POOL/AFP via Getty Images) Very soon, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will decide whether to change a controversial ruling – one that risks undermining the future of American innovation. The case involves Efficient Power Conversion Corporation, a California-based company that holds patents on core semiconductor technology. After developing and patenting this innovation under U.S. law, the company found itself undercut by a Chinese competitor, Innoscience, which began selling copycat products in the U.S. market at artificially low prices. The American company, EPC, did exactly what innovators are supposed to do in such cases: it sought relief from the U.S. International Trade Commission, the federal agency tasked with investigating – and, when necessary, halting – unfair imports. The ITC's process is deliberately rigorous. First, an administrative law judge conducts a full evidentiary hearing. Then the six-member Commission – three Republicans, three Democrats, all confirmed by the Senate – reviews the ruling and decides whether to affirm it. Finally, the President has 60 days to intervene if the result conflicts with broader policy interests. In this case, every step played out in favor of EPC. The administrative law judge ruled that Innoscience had violated U.S. trade law by importing products that infringed EPC's valid patents. The Commission affirmed that finding. The White House declined to intervene. The result was a binding exclusion order, blocking the infringing Chinese products from entering the U.S. market. But even as the ITC investigation was already well underway, a separate administrative panel – the Patent Trial and Appeal Board – decided to launch its own, duplicative review. And just weeks after the ITC's exclusion order became final, the PTAB issued a ruling that directly contradicted the ITC's carefully considered judgment. Its finding? That some of the claims of the key EPC patents were invalid and should never have been granted in the first place. Put simply, two parts of the same government reached opposite conclusions on identical legal issues involving the same companies. Unsurprisingly, the losing Chinese company – already found to have violated U.S. trade law – is now trying to use the PTAB's ruling to overturn the ITC's order so it can resume unfair sales on the U.S. market. PTAB was created under the 2011 America Invents Act to serve as a supposedly faster and cheaper alternative to patent litigation in other forums. Instead, it has slowed things down and added costs by being used to relitigate patent validity decisions reached by other bodies, including federal district courts and the ITC. PTAB can even agree to repeatedly review the same patent by focusing on different patent claims each time, an incredibly wasteful practice. This is economically costly and highly inefficient, at a time when efficiency in government is a stated Administration priority. It is also highly inappropriate and leads to bad results, including weaker patents and potentially reduced innovation. PTAB 'judges' actually are mere 'inferior' officers (government employees appointed by the Commerce Secretary and supervised by the PTO Director). In marked contrast, ITC Commissioners and federal district court judges are 'principal' officers of the United States nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. PTAB should not be in a position to overrule superior officers on patent questions. There's another major issue with PTAB. Patents, once issued are important property rights that drive innovation and thus should not be easily undone after being granted. Thus it is entirely appropriate that the ITC and federal courts can only strike down patents based on 'clear and convincing evidence,' a tough standard which means that the evidence is highly probable. In contrast, PTAB boards can strike down patent claims based on 'the preponderance of the evidence,' a low bar (probability just above 50-50) that makes it relatively easy to 'kill' patents. Indeed, a high percentage of patent claims have been wiped out by PTAB. This has happened despite studies showing that initial patent examining is very high quality and 'that examiners are far more likely to reject patents that should have been issued than they are to issue patents that should have been rejected.' The PTAB's interference in the EPC-Innoscience dispute was enabled by a 2022 Biden PTO policy memo that eliminated longstanding safeguards that prevented this kind of inter-agency conflict. The 2022 policy memo instructed PTAB not to deny a requested patent review when the request was based on a parallel ITC proceeding. Trump-appointed Acting PTO Director Coke Stewart rescinded the 2022 memo in February 2025, but by then the PTAB EPC case had already been instituted under the old rules. Weeks after Stewart's rescission of the Biden-era policy, in March 2025, the PTAB issued its decision, striking down an EPC patent and directly contradicting the ITC's final judgment. Under current rules, the Director has full authority to review and overturn that decision. A formal request for Director Review is now pending. Acting Director Stewart could act decisively by reversing the PTAB's EPC ruling. That could help restore the consistency and coherence the law requires and innovators deserve. This case is about much more than any one company or patent. It is a test of whether American agencies can act coherently – and whether we will allow foreign companies to exploit internal contradictions in our legal system. The ITC plays a critical role in protecting American innovation. It remains one of the few venues where U.S. companies can obtain timely, enforceable relief against unfair foreign competition. Without it, these cases drag on for years while patent-infringing products, often subsidized by foreign governments, flood American markets. The facts here are clear: An American company proved its case through proper legal channels and won. Then, at the eleventh hour, a separate agency claimed the patents never should have existed – even though the matter had already been fully tried before the ITC, with live witnesses, fact discovery, and a complete evidentiary record. The PTO still has a chance to restore order. Swift action overturning the PTAB's ruling would send the clearest possible message: final decisions by the U.S. government – reached through proper legal process and presidential review – cannot be casually undone by conflicting bureaucratic panels. The PTO's decision in this case will send an important signal about the Trump administration's commitment to eliminating bureaucratic barriers that stifle patent-driven American innovation.
