Do I sound sick to you? Researchers are building AI that would diagnose COVID-19 by listening to people talk.

In the fight against COVID-19, several artificial intelligence labs are turning to an unexpected piece of evidence that might help diagnose the illness: people's voices. A team of researchers from Harvard and MIT is using machine learning to comb through voice recordings from COVID-19 patients and healthy people in an attempt to identify specific vocal signatures that could indicate someone is carrying the virus. A similar project is underway at Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab. Research is still in early stages, but the teams aim to develop AI tools that could tell people whether they have coronavirus based on an audio recording of their voice. If proven successful, the tools could allow more people to choose to self-isolate even if they don't have access to a COVID-19 test.