Musk’s Neuralink plans a trial to convert thoughts to text in October.

This would represent a major advance in brain implant technology 

               

Musk’s Neuralink plans a trial to convert thoughts to text in October.

Neuralink, the brain implant company owned by Elon Musk, plans to launch a clinical trial in the US in October, aiming to use its device to convert thoughts into text. This could open new avenues for communication among people with speech difficulties.

The company also hopes to implant its device in a healthy person by 2030, as part of its ultimate goal of creating consumer-oriented technology. This would represent a significant expansion of the current activities of brain implant companies, which only test their devices on people with serious medical conditions that warrant risky brain surgery, according to a Bloomberg report.

“Currently, we envision a world, in three to four years, where a perfectly healthy person will receive a Neuralink chip,” said company president DJ Seo at a presentation at the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies in Seoul last week. Seo added that Neuralink aims to begin a new clinical trial to read speech directly from the brain, saying, "If you imagine saying something, we can capture that."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted Neuralink an exemption to use an experimental device in the trial, allowing it to begin testing an unapproved device, according to a presentation accompanying Seo's lecture. 

The company is currently conducting five other clinical trials to test brain implants that control electronic devices, such as computers or robotic arms. No commercially available brain implants for patients currently exist that can read what a patient wants to say directly from the brain.

Neuralink is one of several companies working on developing a brain-computer interface, which could allow direct communication between the brain and electronic devices, bypassing limbs or sensory organs. Neuralink's short-term goal is to improve the lives of people with medical conditions; its long-term ambition is to enhance human capabilities in general.

Neuralink and other companies have begun testing devices that enable people with paralysis to control computers with their minds, allowing them to use a virtual keyboard to type words in some cases. Reading words directly from the brain could be significantly faster.

Sio said that such technologies would allow people to query AI platforms with large language models directly using their minds, bypassing the keyboard. “We believe it’s actually possible to demonstrate the ability to speak to the latest AI models, or large language models, at the speed of thought—even faster than you speak—and receive that information through your AirPods, closing the loop completely,” he said.

Many researchers are using similar devices to try to help people with strokes or neurodegenerative diseases like ALS, which damages the nerve cells that control movement. Those with ALS can still think, but some cannot control their mouths to speak. 

Neurodevelopmental devices, such as brain implants, transmit a person’s speech directly to a computer. Other scientists have demonstrated in published research that they can read what a person is trying to say, or even what they are imagining, directly from their brain.