Faking sickness is about to get difficult for everyone. Now, researchers have developed an Artificial intelligence (AI) tool to detect whether someone has a cold just from the sound of your voice.
Researchers at the Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology in Surat and Germany's Rhenish University of Applied Science have developed a method to detect speech signals in a non-invasive manner, according to Economist.
The researchers analysed the voice patterns of 630 persons of which 111 of these people were having a cold. The speech patterns were analysed to identify if a person is truly suffering from a cold. The analysis showed if AI could classify cold and non-cold speech.
The study used harmonics (vocal rhythms in human speech) to detect the presence of cold in people.
The Economist further reported that the volunteers were asked to count from 1 to 40 followed by describing what they did over the weekend. They were then asked to recite Aesop's fable titled The North Wind and the Sun. The study's accuracy in detecting cold was 70 per cent.
The researchers said in a study published in the science journal ScienceDirect, "The proposed features efficiently capture the spectral difference between cold and non-cold speech and can be utilised to automatically diagnose common cold and related disorders."
The purpose of this study was to develop a method that gives a higher performance with fewer features to identify a person with a common cold from their speech.
According to researchers, this feature can help people prevent the spread of viral infections and remotely monitor the health of a person with a common cold.
