News Neuroscience

An AI can decode speech from brain activity with surprising accuracy

The research is still a ways away from helping people who can’t communicate through speech

blueprint style illustration of a brain with lines and shapes to indicate networks

Artificial intelligence takes one step closer to noninvasively decoding what we hear and intend on saying from brain activity data.

Andriy Onufriyenko/Moment/Getty Images

By Jonathan Moens

An artificial intelligence can decode words and sentences from brain activity with surprising — but still limited — accuracy. Using only a few seconds of brain activity data, the AI guesses what a person has heard.