Neuralink, a company founded by Elon Musk, plans to begin clinical trials in the United States in October 2025 of a device that can read speech signals directly from the brain and convert them into text, Bloomberg reports. The goal is to help people with speech disorders, including after a stroke or with neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
The company's president, DJ Seo, said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted permission for the study under an experimental device exemption. He said the technology would be able to record what a person is trying to say or imagines saying.
"If you’re imagining saying something, we would be able to pick that up," said the Neuralink president.
Neuralink is currently conducting five other clinical trials of implants that allow electronic devices, including computers and robotic prostheses, to be controlled using brain signals. There are no commercially available implants that can directly read speech from the brain.
The company is looking to implant its device in healthy people by 2030, a step toward creating consumer technology. In the future, Seo said, users will be able to interact with large AI language models "at the speed of thought" and receive responses, for example through headphones.
Similar developments are already being tested by other scientific groups to restore speech in patients who retain the ability to think but cannot physically pronounce words.
The October trial has been pushed back from a previous plan to start implanting the language cortex by the end of September. In addition to restoring speech, Neuralink is also exploring treatments for blindness and Parkinson's disease. The company plans to implant 20,000 people a year by 2031.