Bridging Voice Partners with AudioShake to Empower ALS Patients Through Voice Isolation
For individuals living with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), the loss of communication as the disease progresses can be one of the most significant and heartbreaking symptoms. Approximately 95% of people with ALS lose the ability to speak, deeply affecting their ability to interact with loved ones and caregivers. However, thanks to a powerful collaboration between Bridging Voice, ElevenLabs, and AudioShake, a transformative solution is helping restore communication in a way that feels personal and true to each patient's identity.
Restoring the Voices of ALS Patients
Bridging Voice, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering ALS patients, is using cutting-edge voice cloning technology to help patients communicate using their own, unique voices—long after they’ve lost the ability to speak on their own. Central to this effort is AudioShake’s innovative stem separation technology, which enables the isolation and preservation of the patient’s voice from a variety of audio sources.
For voice cloning technology like ElevenLabs to truly give ALS patients their voice back, it needs to train and understand what their authentic voice sounds like. This requires high-quality recordings of the patient’s voice—whether from old videos, phone calls, or any other audio sources. However, often these recordings are often filled with background noise, overlapping conversations, and other distractions, making it difficult to isolate the patient’s voice.
Read the story of creating a voice for Bridging Voice patient Mike B.
A New Era for ALS Communication Technology
This is where AudioShake’s technology comes in. AudioShake’s technology specializes in separating elements in an audio file—dialogue, background noise, music, and even multiple voices—into distinct tracks. This allows Bridging Voice to isolate the patient’s voice, ensuring the creation of a voice clone that is clear, authentic, and true to the patient’s original sound.
"AudioShake has completely transformed my workflow. What used to take hours of painstaking manual editing is now done in minutes, freeing up time for what truly matters—connecting with the people I’m helping. For individuals with ALS, this means creating their voices faster and with better quality than ever before. It’s not just a time-saver; it’s a tool that makes a real difference." – Richard Cave, Bridging Voice
By using AudioShake’s technology, Bridging Voice can extract the patient’s voice from complex recordings with incredible precision. This breakthrough in multi-speaker isolation enables the extraction of individual voices even when multiple people are speaking at once, allowing for the creation of a highly accurate voice clone.
The result is a digital voice replica that can be used across communication devices and software, allowing ALS patients to "speak" using their own voice. This technology not only restores a crucial aspect of personal identity but also enables patients to communicate more naturally with their loved ones, caregivers, and the world around them.
Bridging Voice’s innovative use of AudioShake’s multi-speaker isolation technology is helping to restore a sense of identity for ALS patients, marking a critical milestone in the fight to improve quality of life through technology.
The Future and Opportunity in Voice Isolation Technology
This project is just the beginning of multi-speaker isolation technology. As it continues to evolve, multi-speaker separations holds great promise for various applications, including enhancing communication devices for individuals with speech impairments, improving audio clarity in noisy environments, and refining the quality of voice-based AI systems and transcription services. The potential of multi-speaker isolation technology to improve accessibility and communication in healthcare, media, entertainment, and more is vast.