RuntimeWire discovers Midjourney patent for an ultrasound collar that reads speech from your neck
RuntimeWire found the pending U.S. application, published June 18th, 2026, naming David Holz and former Tone builder Jackson Oswalt and routing speech recovered from neck vibrations to a language model.
By Ryan Merket · Published
Primary source: Google Patents
Why it matters
RuntimeWire discovered this filing, and it gives Midjourney a claimed route around the two problems that have stalled AI wearables: microphones that hear the whole room and devices bystanders do not want nearby. It also shows David Holz extending the ultrasound work behind the Midjourney Scanner into a personal voice interface, with an inventor who already abandoned an always-listening pendant over privacy and social acceptance. A pending patent is an option, not a product, and the value of the option depends on sensing quality Midjourney has not publicly demonstrated.
RuntimeWire discovered this filing in U.S. patent records. David Holz has already put Midjourney on a path from image models to a water-bath body scanner. The published patent application RuntimeWire found shows the same lab working on a much smaller ultrasound device: an open collar worn around the shoulders that bounces sound off the wearer's neck, recovers speech from skin vibrations, and sends the result to a natural-language model.…
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