Restoring the Voice of ALS Patients with KT AI Technology

KT Convergence Technology Institute is using AI technology to restore the voices of patients with Lou Gehrig's disease.

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Hye-seon] KT announced on the 19th that it has collaborated with the non-profit Seungil Hope Foundation for ALS patients to restore the voices of eight ALS patients who are gradually losing their voices, and provided free support so that these voices can be used in daily life through the mobile app ‘MaeumTalk (TALK)’.

ALS is a condition where motor neurons are destroyed, causing muscle weakness and various symptoms. When the tongue muscles weaken, clear pronunciation gradually becomes difficult, and as paralysis progresses to the point where a tracheostomy is required, the patient ultimately loses their voice completely.

KT’s top-tier personalized text-to-speech technology (P-TTS) in Korea was utilized for voice restoration. This technology can replicate a person’s voice, tone, and speech style through deep learning-based AI training with only a small amount of voice samples. KT corrected the voice sample data and generated voices based on audio files of 500 conversational sentences recorded and submitted by the patients using their smartphones.

When ALS patients input text into KT’s MaeumTalk app, the app reads it aloud in the patient’s own voice. The text-to-speech conversion process involves tens of millions of calculations, but the processing time is about one second, resulting in no perceptible delay and enabling real-time conversations with others. Voice and video calls are also possible, and users can switch seamlessly from voice calls to video calls without interruption.

KT’s connection with ALS patients began at the KT customer center. The wife of one patient inquired whether they could use the Giga Genie ‘My Voice Story’ service so that their children could hear their father’s voice even after he lost it. Although this service was initially offered as a temporary event, the counselor and the responsible department who received the story coordinated cooperation among multiple departments to ensure continuous service for the family. Three months later, the patient underwent a tracheostomy, but the family was able to continue hearing the restored father’s voice through Giga Genie ‘My Voice Story’ and the ‘MaeumTalk’ app.

Subsequently, the family introduced the KT MaeumTalk app to other patients in similar situations, and through this, KT was able to receive recommendations for voice restoration candidates via the Seungil Hope Foundation. Previously, through the ‘Finding Voice’ project, KT has been supporting the restoration of voices for deaf individuals who lost their voices since 2020 using AI technology to facilitate smooth communication.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.