AI can catch COVID-19 cases based on how people 'produce sound,' MIT researchers find

Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
(Image credit: Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have published a paper suggesting artificial intelligence can recognize potential coronavirus cases based on how people sound when they cough, PCMag reports.

The MIT team employed an AI model that was able to accurately identify 98.5 percent of coughs from people who were confirmed to have been infected by the coronavirus. The accuracy actually ticked up to 100 percent among people who were not displaying symptoms. "We think this shows that the way you produce sound changes when you have COVID, even if you're asymptomatic," Brian Subirana, the paper's co-author, said.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.