Yanny or Laurel

[7] Notable individuals who responded to the auditory illusion included Ellen DeGeneres, Stephen King, and Chrissy Teigen.

[17] On May 16, 2018, a report in The New York Times noted a spectrogram analysis confirmed how the extra sounds for "yanny" can be graphed in the mixed re-recording.

Kevin Franck, the director of audiology at the Boston hospital Massachusetts Eye and Ear says that the clip exists on a "perceptual boundary" and compared it to the Necker cube illusion.

[19] David Alais from the University of Sydney's school of psychology also compared the clip to the Necker cube or the face/vase illusion, calling it a "perceptually ambiguous stimulus".

[15] Brad Story, a professor of speech, language, and audiology at the University of Arizona said that the low quality of the recording creates ambiguity.

Valerie Hazan, a professor of speech sciences at University College London, said of the video that "When faced with an acoustic signal which is somewhat ambiguous because it is low-quality or noisy, your brain attempts a 'best fit' between what is heard and the expected word.