Brain implants, AI, and a speech synthesizer have turned brain activity into robot words

Neural networks have been used to turn words that a human has heard into intelligible, recognizable speech. It could be a step toward technology that can one day decode people's thoughts. A challenge: Thanks to fMRI scanning, we've known for decades that when people speak, or hear others, it activates specific parts of their brain. However, it's proved hugely challenging to translate thoughts into words. A team from Columbia University has developed a system that combines deep learning with a speech synthesizer to do just that.