Neuralink, the company founded by Elon Musk, plans to commence clinical trials in the USA in October 2025 for a device capable of reading speech signals directly from the brain and converting them into text, as reported by Bloomberg. The primary goal is to assist individuals with speech impairments, particularly those affected by strokes or neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

DJ Seo, the company president, announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted permission for the study under an exemption for experimental devices. The technology aims to capture what a person is trying to say or even what they are imagining saying.

"If you can imagine you are saying something, we will be able to capture it," said the president of Neuralink.

Currently, Neuralink is conducting five additional clinical trials for implants that allow users to control electronic devices, including computers and robotic prosthetics, using brain signals. There are currently no commercially available implants for direct speech reading from the brain.

The company is also considering the possibility of installing its device in healthy individuals by 2030, which would mark a significant step toward consumer technology. According to Seo, in the future, users will be able to interact with large AI language models "at the speed of thought" and receive answers, for example, through headphones.

Similar developments are already being tested by other research groups to restore speech in patients who retain the ability to think but cannot physically articulate words.

The start of the trials has been postponed from the previous schedule, which aimed to begin implantation in the speech cortex by the end of September. Besides speech recovery, Neuralink is exploring potential treatments for blindness and Parkinson's disease. By 2031, the company plans to implant devices in 20,000 people annually.