- Doritos developed an AI to silence chewing sounds on calls, especially gaming sessions.
- The chip brand worked with developers and hundreds of recordings of people chewing to create Doritos Silent.
Gamers, remote workers, and others who annoy others with chewing Doritos during their calls have a new tool to silence the noise.
Doritos Silent, made by the PepsiCo-owned chip brand, cancels the sound of chewing on voice calls. The software works on PCs with any medium where users rely on headphones to make calls, such as Zoom, according to the Washington Post.
But the program is aimed at one of Doritos' key consumers: Gamers.
"Crunch is one of the most distracting features that could throw someone off their game," Mustafa Shamseldin, chief marketing officer of international foods at PepsiCo, told the Post.
The software strikes a balance for consumers, according to the article. A survey of consumers conducted by Doritos found that most gamers like to enjoy a snack while playing. But many also said they don't like the sound of other gamers eating — especially when the person on the other end is chowing down on chips, according to the Post.
Using technology to silence the sound of chewing proved to be a better solution than developing a whole new, less-noisy kind of chip, Fernando Kahane, head of global marketing for Doritos, told the Post.
In 2018, Former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi floated the idea of creating chips to appeal to women that would have less crunch and leave less residue on their fingers.
Doritos later said that it had no plans to release such a chip.
Smooth Technology, an engineering and design studio, worked with Doritos to create Doritos Silent, the chip brand said in a statement.
Creating the software involved recording roughly 500 people eating Doritos, Dylan Fashbaugh, lead developer at Smooth Technology, told the Post.
Smooth then mixed the chewing noises with recordings of people talking to train an AI to tell the difference. "We needed to make something that could really separate the sounds of voices and crunches," Fashbaugh said.