Because of AI, a man with ALS has spoken with his family and kept working from home for two years through a brain implant, at up to 99% word accuracy.
2 years of independent speechAchievedOngoing since Jul 2023Publishedpublished 2 yr 11 mo after the benefit began
UC Davis's intracortical BCI uses deep-learning brain-to-text and cursor decoders with continuous fine-tuning; Nature Medicine (June 2026) documented Casey Harrell's near-daily unassisted use at home for roughly two years.
One participant, an experimental device implanted in 2023, not commercially available; some BCIs in other ALS patients have later stopped working.
- Compared with
- No alternative communication path at comparable speed existed for this participant
- Effect
- Up to 99% word accuracy; ~2 years independent home use
- Reach
- One participant
- Domain
- Accessibility · Classic ML
- Conflicts
- Academic; verify device-maker relationships in the paper.
- What would move the grade
- Multi-participant results with durability data would move evidence to C/B.
Sources
- primaryNature Medicine: Long-term independent use of an intracortical BCI for speech and cursor control (nature.com)
- secondaryUC Davis Health news release (health.ucdavis.edu)
History
- Added.
Cite this entry
Permalink https://becauseofai.org/entry/ucd-als-speech-bci
“Because of AI, a man with ALS has spoken with his family and kept working from home for two years through a brain implant, at up to 99% word accuracy.” Because of AI, updated Oct 22, 2026. https://becauseofai.org/entry/ucd-als-speech-bci