In big breakthrough, AI converts brain waves to speech, helps paralysed woman speak again

tech.hindustantimes.com:

When generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) first became mainstream, many industries were wondering how this transformative technology could create new breakthroughs and help humanity. Recently, we saw one of the most impactful examples of it. A recently published study has revealed that a woman who suffered a stroke and became paralyzed was helped by AI to get a semblance of normalcy back in her life. The woman lost her ability to speak, but researchers were able to connect sensors and wires to her head that read her brain waves and converted them into speech to let her speak again.

The study was published in the Nature journal and highlights that brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) were used to enable the patient to speak again. BCI is a system where the brain is connected to a machine with a monitor and the signals from the brain are digitized and displayed on the screen in audio-visual format after undergoing complex conversion algorithms.

The lead researcher, Dr. Edward Chang, the head of neurological surgery at UCSF, implanted an array of 253 pin-shaped implants into the patient's skull in the same location as her speech center. After that, the implants captured electrical signals that were triggered as the woman tried to speak and answer some basic questions asked by one of the researchers. Every movement of the jaw, the tongue, and the lips were captured by the machine.

This data was then fed into an AI tool that had spent a few weeks making sense of the data. After the training period, the study claims the AI became proficient in recognizing more than 1000 words based on the unique brain signal patterns. Now, with the machine ready, the system enabled the woman to simply mimic speech and the AI would display what