Doritos has announced an AI-powered “crunch cancellation” program to silence the snack’s signature crunch during gaming.
The idea is reminiscent of the time in 2018 when the company tried to create “lady-friendly” chips that didn’t crunch loudly.
But this time, the target audience is the gamer population.
Snacks and gaming are a popular duo, according to Doritos. The company surveyed 3,000 people from around the world about their snacking habits and learned that gamers don’t like to hear others eating, reported The Washington Post.
“Of the 200 people surveyed in the United States, 90% snack while gaming, and the majority said chips make the most bothersome noise when another gamer is eating them,” the Post reported.
“That sound of crunching can just take you out of the experience, but you still want to enjoy your snack because realistically snacking and gaming go hand-in-hand,” Dylan Fashbaugh, lead developer at Brooklyn-based Smooth Technology which worked to develop the free app released earlier this month, told The Washington Post
Doritos released a video further explaining the product, calling it “the world’s first AI-augmented snack powered by crunch cancellation.”
What is Doritos Silent?
Some confusion about the product met Doritos’ social media team when they first announced the software and showed “Doritos Silent” written on a black chip bag.
Users assumed that the chip themselves had been silenced somehow, and they asked questions like “How is that possible?’ and wanted to know where they could buy a bag. One on Instagram quipped,” Ah yes! Soggy Doritos.”
Max Klymenko, a YouTube creator, posted a review of the software in early November, where he originally goes around town asking for the new snack only to find out what it actually is.
Doritos Silent is not a new flavor of chips, but a gaming software that removes the sounds of crunching when playing a game with a microphone.
On the official Doritos Silent website, it’s described as “Crunch Cancellation software” that “silences the sound of the iconic Doritos crunch. So you can eat Doritos without distracting your gaming squad or voice chat party.”
More than 5,000 different Doritos’ crunches trained the AI, and the company assures customers that “no crunch will go undetected” — all will be filtered out so as not to annoy other gamers while eating the snack.
“It works on anything that accepts a microphone,” Fashbaugh told The Washington Post. The FAQ page says the software will work on Discord, Zoom, Skype and Google Meet too.
The new software will only be released for Windows PCs but eventually will expand to other devices, per The Post.
What was the first Dorito flavor?
Doritos’ first chip was originally unflavored, per Doritos.
Executives said in 2017 that the name was first inspired by the Spanish word for “gold,” or “oro,” reported CNN. The suffix “-itos” can mean “little things.”
To revamp and refresh the chip, a flavor was created called “Doritos Taco,” per Doritos. More and more unique flavors joined the line+up throughout the years.
How many flavors of Doritos have there been?
Currently, there are 14 different flavors available on the Doritos product list.
The flavors are Sweet & Tangy BBQ, Flamin’ Hot Cool Ranch, Flamin’ Hot Nacho, Flamin’ Hot Limon, Nacho Cheese, Cool Ranch, Spicy Sweet Chili, Dinamita Chile Limon, Spicy Nacho, Taco, Tapatio, Simply Organic White Cheddar, Flamas, and Salsa Verde.