The new technology works by electrodes being fitted to the face and jaw of the user, designed to pick up otherwise undetectable neuromuscular signals. These slight muscle movements are triggered by internal verbalizations, that is when a person thinks what they are saying rather than actually verbalizing. When a person says words'in their head' any muscle movement cannot be seen with the human eye. It is, as the new research demonstrates, possible to detect this with the aid of artificial intelligence. The technology comes from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and it uses machine-learning system to correlate particular signals with particular words.

MIT researchers have created a wearable device called AlterEgo that can recognize nonverbal prompts, essentially "reading your mind." The system is made up of a device that loops around a user's ear, follows their jawline, and attaches underneath their mouth, and a computer system. The wearable device has electrodes that pick up neuromuscular signals in your jaw and face that are triggered by internal verbalizations (aka saying words in your head) but can't be seen by the human eye. These signals are then given to a machine learning system that analyzes the data, associating specific signals with words. "Our idea was: Could we have a computing platform that's more internal, that melds human and machine in some ways and that feels like an internal extension of our own cognition?"