The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2023
Samsung Unfear: an AI 'sound airbag' for autistic people — One Show 2024 Gold
Samsung turns its Galaxy Buds2 Pro into a free AI app that silences only the sounds that trigger panic — without isolating the wearer.
Samsung Electronics · Cheil Worldwide
What it had to solve
More than 70 million people worldwide live with Autism Spectrum Disorder, and many experience anxiety and panic attacks triggered by hypersensitivity to everyday sounds such as sirens or roadworks. Traditional noise cancellation stops the noise but cancels everything, isolating the user from the world.
How it works
For many people with autism, everyday sounds such as sirens, drills or roadworks can trigger anxiety and panic attacks. In Spain alone around 450,000 people with Autism Spectrum Disorder live with this hypersensitivity, and conventional noise-cancelling earbuds made it worse in a different way: they block everything, cutting the wearer off from conversation and the world around them.
Samsung and Cheil Spain decided not to build new hardware. Unfear is a free AI-powered app for Galaxy Buds2 Pro that listens continuously, recognises sound categories, and suppresses only the noises that generate panic while leaving meaningful audio — speech, music, ambient cues — intact. Different modes target anxiety reduction, focus and general well-being, so the device becomes a 'sound airbag' rather than an isolation chamber.
The app was created together with ten autism associations and members of the ASD community, and scientifically endorsed by the Spanish Society of Psychiatry and Mental Health. It launched ahead of World Autism Awareness Day, reached more than 5,000 downloads with a 4.7/5 rating, and generated coverage in over 200 local and international media outlets.
Why it lands
- It reused a device people already own, so the innovation was a behaviour change in software, not a new gadget to buy.
- Selective suppression solved the flaw of existing ANC: it protects without isolating, keeping the user connected to the world.
- Co-created with autism associations, the solution was built from lived experience rather than assumed needs.
- A functional product for a real need collected 60+ international awards, showing purpose-driven utility can be a creative flagship.
What it did
Launched ahead of World Autism Awareness Day, the free app passed 5,000 downloads with a 4.7/5 user rating, earned coverage in 200+ local and international media (about €1M earned media value), and collected 60+ international awards including a One Show 2024 Gold Pencil.
What you can take
Innovation can live in software on hardware people already own: instead of a new device, Unfear changed what existing earbuds do, turning a mass-market product into a personalised assistive tool.
Since then
Unfear became a flagship of Samsung's 'Technology with Purpose' initiative and one of the most awarded pieces of work of the 2023–2024 cycle, with a One Show 2024 Gold Pencil among its 60+ wins. The app stayed available as a free tool, and the project was widely cited as a template for turning consumer wearables into assistive devices.
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