What new technology has paired up with an old system to give a woman her voice back?

When Sarah Ezekiel lost her voice after developing motor neurone disease (MND) 25 years ago, she eventually regained the ability to speak with an artificial voice. For roughly the last 20 years, Ezekiel has used eye-gaze technology so she can speak and type, much like the late Stephen Hawking. But the “posh robot’s voice” that the system produced was nothing like her actual British voice, and she felt like that part of her identity had been lost.

Modern advancements in technology, however, have brought Ezekiel’s voice back to life. Her family unearthed an old VHS tape with footage of her speaking, but it was very short and background noise obscured her voice. Thanks to AI technologies including ElevenLabs’ Voice Isolator, the U.K.-based tech firm Smartbox was able to isolate and clone her voice from the tape and program it into her speech software. Now when the technology speaks for her, it speaks in a replica of her own voice.

“After such a long time, I couldn’t really remember my voice,” she said. “When I first heard it again, I felt like crying. It’s a kind of miracle.”

“We can feel who she is as a person,” added her daughter Ava.