Deprived of her voice by illness, an elected official regains it thanks to AI

While spinal muscular atrophy was gradually preventing her from giving a speech, Jane Campbell used AI, leaving her colleagues speechless.

A British MP suffering from a degenerative disease on Tuesday became the first person to use an artificial intelligence (AI) generated voice to deliver a speech in Parliament.

Jane Campbell, a member of the House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament, has difficulty speaking due to spinal muscular atrophy, a degenerative neuromuscular disease. "This cutting-edge technology will allow me to participate in debates with my own voice, the one I had before it deteriorated due to my disability," the 67-year-old MP told the assembly in her introduction.

"So allow me to introduce you to Baroness Campbell version 2.0"

Jane Campbell, Member of Parliament in the House of Lords

“I hope you will agree with me that this is an exciting development for the House of Lords, showing the world the best that inclusion in democracy can offer,” she said during a debate on health. “So allow me to introduce you to Baroness Campbell 2.0,” she added, before her speech was delivered with her voice recreated by AI, as it was before the progression of her illness.

Jane Campbell had to obtain permission from the Procedure Committee, which is responsible for protocol within the House of Lords. In 2012, this body had already allowed her to bring her assistant to read her speeches in her place if necessary. This was an exception to a rule dating back to 1707, which prohibits non-members of the House from taking their seats.

Voice clone

Jane Campbell worked with ElevenLabs, a company specializing in the development of natural-sounding synthetic voices, its manager Gabi Leibowitz told AFP. The company worked "with her on her voice clone to refine it and ensure it matched exactly what she wanted," said the speech therapist by training.

While 30 seconds of audio can be enough to recreate a voice, it takes between 30 minutes and an hour of recording to obtain the highest quality clones, she says. Before AI, recreating a voice required a person to record nearly 400 sentences, according to Gabi Leibowitz. And even then, "the result was a relatively robotic voice that didn't really convey any emotion," she explains.

A leading figure in the fight for the rights of disabled people, Jane Campbell was given no more than two years to live, according to doctors' prognosis. She was appointed to the House of Lords as an independent in 2007.