Mind-reading AI turns paralysed man’s brainwaves into instant speech
A brain-computer interface has enabled a man with paralysis to have real-time conversations, without the usual delay in speech
By Christa Lesté-Lasserre
11 June 2025
A man with paralysis being connected to the brain-computer interface system
Lisa E Howard/Maitreyee Wairagkar et al. 2025
A man who lost the ability to speak can now hold real-time conversations and even sing through a brain-controlled synthetic voice.
The brain-computer interface reads the man’s neural activity via electrodes implanted in his brain and then instantaneously generates speech sounds that reflect his intended pitch, intonation and emphasis.
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“This is kind of the first of its kind for instantaneous voice synthesis – within 25 milliseconds,” says Sergey Stavisky at the University of California, Davis.
The technology needs to be improved to make the speech easier to understand, says Maitreyee Wairagkar, also at UC Davis. But the man, who lost the ability to talk due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, still says it makes him “happy” and that it feels like his real voice, according to Wairagkar.
Speech neuroprostheses that use brain-computer interfaces already exist, but these generally take several seconds to convert brain activity into sounds. That makes natural conversation hard, as people can’t interrupt, clarify or respond in real time, says Stavisky. “It’s like having a phone conversation with a bad connection.”
