内容来源：https://www.wired.com/story/deveillance-spectre-i/

内容总结：

近日，一家名为Deveillance的初创公司发布了其首款产品Spectre I——一款设计精巧的便携式桌面球形设备，旨在通过干扰周边设备以阻止语音录制。该设备结合超声波发射器与人工智能技术，不仅能阻断录音尝试，还可探测并记录附近的麦克风。公司计划于2026年下半年以1199美元的价格发售，目前产品仍处于研发阶段。

此消息在社交媒体引发广泛讨论。支持者将其视为对抗日益普及的智能穿戴录音设备的“赛博朋克式抵抗技术”，但同时也招致大量质疑。许多专业人士指出其技术承诺在物理层面难以实现，并质疑其实际效果。

创始人艾达·巴拉达里表示，开发该设备的初衷是为用户提供隐私保护选择，应对人工智能浪潮下无处不在的录音设备。她强调，Spectre I不会录制或分析语音内容，而是通过AI生成干扰信号，使被录制的语音无法被有效识别。

尽管质疑声不断，该产品的热议现象本身已折射出公众对隐私保护技术的迫切需求。有网络安全专家指出，这一讨论凸显消费者对隐私态度的显著转变，并呼吁行业开发真正尊重用户隐私的产品，同时加强相关监管。

目前，Deveillance团队承认技术仍需完善，并表示将继续优化产品以回应外界关切。超声波干扰技术的实际效果、设备体积与功耗的平衡，以及对人与宠物的潜在影响等问题，仍有待进一步验证。

中文翻译：

一家名为"Deveillance"（发音为"dee-veil-ance"）的新创公司本周发布了首款产品——一款造型流畅的便携式桌面圆球，旨在干扰附近设备的录音功能。

这款名为"幽灵I型"的麦克风干扰器融合了超声波发射器与人工智能技术，不仅能阻截试图采集人声的设备，还能探测并记录附近的麦克风，同时保持便于携带的小巧体积。虽然产品仍处于研发阶段，但公司预计将在2026年下半年以1199美元的价格发售。

该公告在社交媒体引发轩然大波。支持者将其誉为对抗日益增长的"持续监听"式AI可穿戴设备的赛博朋克风格抵抗科技，但也遭到推特蓝标认证用户的猛烈质疑，许多人直指其宣传效果过于完美而显得不真实。

"我没想到会引起如此轰动的传播，"毕业于哈佛大学的艾达·巴拉达里表示，她正是Deveillance公司的创始人兼幽灵I型的开发者。"很感激能获得从事这项工作的机会。说实话，看到人们如此关注隐私问题，我也由衷感到欣慰。"

巴拉达里研发这款设备的动机，正是为了对抗AI浪潮催生的各类持续监听设备，例如亚马逊旗下Bee AI公司的手环或Friend智能吊坠。

"人们应该有权选择分享哪些信息，尤其是在对话中，"巴拉达里说，"如果我们连交谈时都要担心言论被断章取义或曲解，在这个新时代该如何建立人际关系？"

私人时刻

随着政府监控在美国成为风尚，人们对隐私的焦虑加剧不难理解。移民海关执法局正在构建覆盖社交媒体、个人手机乃至内部员工名录的监控体系。这种紧张态势同样渗透至私营领域——科技巨头在为移民海关执法局提供技术支持的同时，也在收集、购买并利用用户的每一点个人数据。

上月，家用安防摄像头公司Ring在超级碗广告中宣传用其产品寻找走失宠物，观众对这种构建社区全景监控的隐私隐患感到震惊并立即发起抵制，迫使Ring撤回宣传策略。一周后，该公司宣布终止与同样备受争议的安防公司Flock Safety的既定合作计划。

"人们开始意识到自己可能随时处于隐私暴露的状态，"音乐人兼YouTuber本·乔丹表示，他长期制作关于音频干扰器和Flock安防摄像头等隐私安全议题的视频内容。

正如业余开发者曾创建应用提醒人们周围是否有人佩戴智能眼镜，幽灵I型是帮助用户重掌隐私控制权的又一次尝试。但对于这款利用AI和扬声器来对抗其他AI与麦克风的设备，其技术有效性仍需实践验证。质疑者认为Deveillance的宣传承诺显得牵强。

"这些承诺相当宏大，"乔丹指出，"但遗憾的是，它们某种程度上违背了物理定律。"

干扰技术演进

超声波麦克风干扰技术早在冷战前就已存在，数十年来情报机构和DIY爱好者都在持续改进。这甚至形成了小型产业，人们既能在阿里巴巴等平台购买干扰器，也能通过GitHub上的软件自行组装。

音频干扰器往往形如厚重的砖块，因为频率发射器和电源需要占用空间。若追求强效干扰能力，设备就难以保持隐蔽；若过度追求小巧，则干扰功率会大打折扣。

"我们致力于打造轻巧的设备，尽管物理限制可能让这目标难以实现，"巴拉达里在给《连线》的书面回复中写道。

为突破这一局限，巴拉达里表示幽灵I型将运用AI技术混淆语音，而非单纯用声墙遮蔽。该设备会发射AI生成的抵消信号来欺骗自动语音识别系统。虽然研发目标是让发射器达到表面静音水平，但目前原型机仍会产生可闻的嗡鸣声。

这套AI系统针对普通人声的超声波频段进行定制化干扰。"最终会产生整体混沌的录音——环境噪音也会被混淆，"巴拉达里写道，"传统干扰器可能被语音重构技术破解，或遭ASR系统绕过。而我们的方法能确保这种情况不会发生。"

但芝加哥大学语言学教授梅丽莎·巴埃斯-伯克指出："人声存在极大差异性，根本不存在所谓的'标准人声信号'。"

巴拉达里坚称幽灵设备不会追踪任何语音内容，强调算法完全基于公司内部研发训练进行优化。毕竟幽灵I型内部并未安装麦克风。"AI经过优化，能发射无法通过后期处理重构的信号，"她解释道。

Deveillance还宣称设备可通过探测射频信号定位附近麦克风，但批评者指出，除非传感器紧贴麦克风，否则射频检测法效果有限。

"如果真能如宣传所言通过射频识别元件，这技术将彻底改变科技格局，"乔丹在自制设备测试麦克风射频特征后给《连线》的回复中写道，"简直能在曼哈顿进行射电天文观测了。"

该公司同时探索集成非线性节点探测技术——这是安防专家用于侦测隐藏窃听器的高频无线电信号。此类探测器价格昂贵，目前主要应用于军事行动等专业领域。

即便设备能精确定位麦克风，室内物体也会改变频率传播与相互作用方式。发射频率本身也可能存在问题。目前尚无充分研究证实超声波对人耳的影响，但部分人群和许多宠物仍能感知这种频率，并可能产生不适甚至痛感。巴拉达里承认团队需要就宠物受影响程度进行更多测试。

"他们根本做不到这点，"工程师兼YouTuber戴夫·琼斯在给《连线》的邮件中直言，"他们玩弄文字游戏暗示能检测所有类型麦克风，实际可能只是扫描蓝牙音频设备。这完全站不住脚。"巴拉达里则重申幽灵设备结合了射频与低功耗蓝牙技术进行麦克风探测。

《连线》要求巴拉达里提供设备在识别与干扰周边麦克风方面的有效性证据。她分享了数段短视频，显示人们将手机贴耳收听疑似被干扰的音频片段，但这些影像远不足以证明设备效能。

不完美的未来

巴拉达里坦然接受批评，承认技术尚在发展阶段。"我其实感谢这些评论，它们促使我更深入思考，"她说，"我相信通过整合现有构想，这些关切都能得到解决。"

网友迅速将幽灵I型戏称为《沙丘》中的"静默锥体"。如今Deveillance官网赫然写着："我们的目标是让静默锥体成为现实。"

公民实验室网络安全研究员约翰·斯科特-雷尔顿虽对幽灵I型持批判态度，但仍肯定其传播热度反映了人们对夺回隐私权的技术产品的真切渴望。

"这次事件爆发的积极意义在于，它如同Ring事件的重演，凸显消费者对无处不在的录音设备的态度转变之快、之剧烈，"斯科特-雷尔顿指出，"我们需要开发既满足人们期待酷炫功能，又不会引发隐私侵犯和同意缺失问题的产品。这既需要设备层面的控制，也需要对相关企业进行监管。"

电子前沿基金会高级技术专家库珀·昆汀认同这一观点，尽管他也认为Deveillance的尝试存在缺陷。

"如果这项技术奏效，将为许多人带来福音，"昆汀在给《连线》的邮件中写道，"看到有公司致力于保护隐私而非钻研从我们身上榨取数据的新方法，总是令人欣慰的。"

英文来源：

A new startup called Deveillance (pronounced dee-veil-ance) announced its first-ever gadget earlier this week—a sleek, portable tabletop orb that aims to jam nearby devices from recording voices.
Called Spectre I, the microphone jammer is a combination of ultrasonic frequency emitters and AI smarts designed to not only block devices trying to capture someone’s speech, but also detect and log nearby microphones, all while being small enough to carry around. It’s still very much in development, but the company expects to sell the Spectre I in the second half of 2026 for $1,199.
The announcement caused quite a stir on social media. It was boosted by some as cyberpunk-style resistance tech against the ever-growing category of always-listening AI wearables, but also became the target of a firestorm of skepticism by blue-check critics on X who were eager to call it too good to be true.
“I didn't expect it to go this viral,” says Aida Baradari, a recent Harvard graduate who founded Deveillance and developed the Spectre I. “I'm grateful that I've been given the opportunity to work on this. I'm also really grateful, honestly, that people care.”
Baradari was motivated to build the device as a counter to these always-listening devices that the AI boom has ushered in, like the bracelet from Amazon-owned Bee AI or the Friend pendant.
“People should have a choice over what they want to share, especially in conversations," Baradari says. “If we can't converse anymore without feeling scared of saying something that's potentially taken out of context or wrong, then how are we going to build human connection in this new age?”
Private Time
It’s easy to see why that anxiety about privacy has heightened, as government surveillance is en vogue in the US. ICE is building out its own surveillance systems around everything from social media to everyone’s phones to its own employee roster. That tension runs deep within the private sector, too, as big tech fuels ICE while also collecting, buying, and using every scrap of your personal data.
Last month, when home security camera company Ring ran a Super Bowl commercial about using its cameras to find lost dogs, viewers were appalled at the privacy implications of a neighborhood panopticon and responded with immediate pushback. It caused Ring to backpedal. A week later, the company announced it would no longer pursue a planned partnership with the similarly controversial security company Flock Safety.
“People are kind of waking up to the idea that they may not have privacy at any given time,” says musician and YouTuber Benn Jordan, who makes videos about security and privacy issues like audio jammers and Flock security cameras.
Like the hobbyist developer who created an app to warn people if someone is wearing smart glasses nearby, Spectre I is another effort to give users a way to take back control of their privacy. But for a device that uses AI and speakers to block other AI and microphones, the technology has to be proven to work first. Skeptics say Deveillance’s claims appear far-fetched.
“These are some pretty big promises,” Jordan says. “Unfortunately, they're kind of up against physics.”
Jamming Out
Ultrasonic microphone jammers have been around since before the Cold War, built and developed over the decades by intelligence agencies and DIY tinkerers alike. They have also become a sort of pocket industry, where you can buy jammers on sites like AliBaba or build your own using software from GitHub.
Audio jammers tend to be bulky, thick bricks, because frequency emitters and power sources take up space. Make the device powerful enough to work, and it’s likely too large to be discreet. Too small, and the jammer won’t have the juice to properly disrupt a microphone.
“We're aiming for a device that's light and small, though this might end up being hard to do due to constraints in physics,” Baradari wrote in a text to WIRED.
To bridge that gap, Baradari says the Spectre I will use AI to garble speech, not just obfuscate it with a wall of sound. The device sends out AI-generated cancellation signals meant to fool automatic speech recognition (ASR) tech. While the plan is to get the emitters to an ostensibly silent level, the current working version of the Spectre I does produce an audible hum.
The AI is being used to target a range of ultrasonic frequencies specifically tailored to average human voices. "The result is a muddled recording overall— so environmental noises are also muddled," Baradari wrote. "In traditional jammers, voices can be reconstructed, or the jamming can sometimes be bypassed by ASR systems. With our method, we are making sure that doesn’t happen."
But Melissa Baese-Berk, a Linguistics professor at the University of Chicago, says, “There's so much variation in people's voices. It's not the case that there's a specific signal that's like the ‘voice signal.’”
Baradari claims Spectre doesn't track any voices or what people are saying, citing that the algorithm is optimized based on Deveillance's internal development and training. After all, there is no microphone inside the Spectre I. “The AI is optimized to send out signals that can't be reconstructed in post-processing,” she says.
Deveillance also claims the Spectre can find nearby microphones by detecting radio frequencies (RF), but critics say finding a microphone via RF emissions is not effective unless the sensor is immediately beside it.
“If you could detect and recognize components via RF the way Spectre claims to, it would literally be transformative to technology,” Jordan wrote in a text to WIRED after he built a device to test detecting RF signatures in microphones. “You’d be able to do radio astronomy in Manhattan.”
Deveillance is also looking at ways to integrate nonlinear junction detection (NLJD), a very high-frequency radio signal used by security professionals to find hidden mics and bugs. NLJD detectors are expensive and used primarily in professional contexts like military operations.
Even if a device could detect a microphone's exact location, objects around a room can change how the frequencies spread and interact. The emitted frequencies could also be a problem. There haven’t been adequate studies to show what effects ultrasonic frequencies have on the human ear, but some people and many pets can still hear them and find them obnoxious or even painful. Baradari acknowledges her team needs to do more testing to see how pets are affected.
“They simply cannot do this,” engineer and YouTuber Dave Jones (who runs the channel EEVblog) wrote in an email to WIRED. “They are using the classic trick of using wording to imply that it will detect every type of microphone, when all they are probably doing is scanning for Bluetooth audio devices. It's totally lame.” Baradari reiterates that the Spectre uses a combination of RF and Bluetooth low energy to detect microphones.
WIRED asked Baradari to share any evidence of the Spectre's effectiveness at identifying and blocking microphones in a person's vicinity. Baradari shared a few short video clips of people putting their phones to their ears listening to audio clips—which were presumably jammed by the Spectre—but these videos do little to prove that the device works.
Future Imperfect
Baradari has taken the critiques in stride, acknowledging that the tech is still in development. “I actually appreciate those comments because they're making me think and see more things as well,” Baradari says. “I do believe that with the ideas that we're having and integrating into one device, these concerns can be addressed.”
People were quick to poke fun at the Spectre I online, calling the technology the cone of silence from Dune. Now, the Deveillance website reads, “Our goal is to make the cone of silence become reality.”
John Scott-Railton, a cybersecurity researcher at Citizen Lab, who is critical of the Spectre I, lauded the device’s virality as an indication of the real hunger for these kinds of gadgets to win back our privacy.
“The silver lining of this blowing up is that it is a Ring-like moment that highlights how quickly and intensely consumer attitudes have shifted around pervasive recording devices,” says Scott-Railton. “We need to be building products that do all the cool things that people want, but that don't have the massive privacy and consent violation undertow. You need device-level controls, and you need regulations of the companies that are doing this.”
Cooper Quintin, a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, echoed those sentiments, even if critics believe Deveillance's efforts to be flawed.
“If this technology works, it could be a boon for many,” Quintin wrote in an email to WIRED. “It is nice to see a company creating something to protect privacy instead of working on new and creative ways to extract data from us.”