Because of AI, 30 hearing-aid users understood far more words in heavy noise — according to the company that makes the device.

Fortell's neural source-separation hearing aid (launched Dec 2025) reports a pre-registered double-blind 30-person trial against Phonak's Audéo Infinio Sphere showing a 9.2 dB vs 3.1 dB signal-to-noise improvement on QuickSIN, alongside a 20-person blinded preference study published in the International Journal of Audiology (May 2026).

Both studies are Fortell-funded with a Fortell employee as first author, the control device also uses neural-network noise reduction, and the 30-person intelligibility trial was posted on the company's site rather than confirmed in a journal as of October 2026.

Compared with

Fortell Spatial AI vs leading competitor AI hearing aid, within-subject crossover

Effect

9.2 dB vs 3.1 dB SNR improvement; ~19x odds of correct word recognition (company figures) (Company-reported: 69%→90%, 31%→80%, 7%→50% words correct across noise levels)

Reach

Prescription product, 30+ US states as of Oct 2026

Domain

Accessibility · Classic ML

Conflicts

Fortell Research funded both studies; first author is a Fortell employee.

What would move the grade

Independent replication, or a comparison against a non-AI hearing aid, would move attribution and evidence.

Sources

• primaryIJA: Spatial AI consistently preferred to state-of-the-art hearing aids in multitalker noise (tandfonline.com)
• primaryFortell evidence page (intelligibility trial) (fortell.com)
• secondaryIndependent summary: what is actually known about Fortell (audiologyassociates.org)

Editor's notes

verify: a claimed Oct 8, 2026 IJA publication of the 30-person trial (PubMed 42850968) could not be confirmed.

History

• Oct 22, 2026Added.

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