British Woman With Motor Neurone Disease Regains Her Voice Through AI

TDT | Manama

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A British artist who lost her voice to motor neurone disease (MND) more than two decades ago is speaking again in her own voice, thanks to artificial intelligence and a short, faint home video recording.

Sarah Ezekiel, from north London, was diagnosed with MND at the age of 34 while pregnant with her second child. The illness gradually damaged her nervous system and took away her ability to speak. For years, she relied on a computer-generated voice to communicate, though it never truly sounded like her. Despite her challenges, Ezekiel continued her career as an artist, creating her work using a computer cursor.

Her children, Aviva and Eric, grew up never knowing the sound of their mother’s real voice. That changed when UK medical communication company Smartbox used AI technology to recreate her speech from an eight-second, poor-quality clip found in an old home video.

Simon Poole, from Smartbox, said they had initially asked Ezekiel for an hour-long recording. Normally, high-quality and lengthy audio is needed to build a natural-sounding voice, and earlier versions often ended up flat and monotone. But with rapid advances in AI, even the tiny clip was enough to bring Sarah’s voice back.

“It was the only recording she could find, and my heart sank when I first heard it,” Poole admitted. Yet, against the odds, the technology worked — giving Ezekiel her voice, and her children, for the first time, the chance to hear how their mother once sounded.