New AI app helps people with ALS keep their own voices
Voice Back created by college student whose grandmother lost ability to speak
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- Voice Back allows people with ALS and other conditions that affect speech communicate in a voice that sounds like their own.
- The AI-powered smartphone app was created by a college student whose grandmother lost the ability to speak due to ALS.
- The app has been downloaded more than 50,000 times across more than 23 countries.
An artificial intelligence-powered communication app helps people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other conditions that affect speech keep communicating using a voice that sounds like their own.
Called Voice Back, the augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) app can create a personalized voice from a short audio recording. Users can then type what they want to say or tap saved phrases, which the app speaks aloud using the cloned natural-sounding voice.
The app is free to download on smartphones and other devices. Full access costs $4.99 a month after a 7-day free trial or $29.99 as a one-time purchase.
Voice Back grew out of the experience of its founder and CEO, Riya Jain, a 20-year-old Duke University student whose grandmother lost her ability to speak due to ALS in 2024. At the time, the speech-generating apps that her family found sounded “flat” and “robotic,” and her grandmother would rather stay quiet than sound like someone else.
Jain was 19 and had no formal engineering training when she taught herself to code and launched Voice Back in August 2025. One year later, the app has been downloaded more than 50,000 times across more than 23 countries and is being used by people with ALS and other conditions that cause speech loss, according to the company.
“Everyone deserves to be heard with their own unique voice. My grandma didn’t want a device that didn’t sound like her. Voice Back exists so that no one else has to choose between staying silent and sounding like a stranger,” Jain said in a company press release.
Voice Back creates personalized voice from recorded speech
ALS is a progressive neurological disease in which motor neurons, the nerve cells that control voluntary movement, become damaged and die. As the disease progresses, weakness can also affect the muscles used to speak, making communication increasingly difficult.
AAC tools can help people whose speech has become difficult or impossible to understand communicate in other ways, including by turning typed text into spoken words. Voice banking allows people at risk of losing their speech to record their voice so it can later be used to create a personalized synthetic voice.
However, traditional voice banking can require recording dozens to hundreds of scripted sentences. In addition to taking a long time and energy to complete, these approaches are not suited for people whose speech is already affected — and for about one-third of people with ALS, speech and swallowing issues are among the first symptoms to emerge.
Voice Back instead can create a personalized voice from about 10 to 60 seconds of recorded speech, with the process completed in less than a minute. The company says this means users can create a natural-sounding voice in one sitting, even if their speech has already begun to change.
People who have already lost their ability to speak can use an older recording, such as a voicemail, audio message, or home video. If no recording is available, they can choose from a library of existing voices.
The personalized voice is paired with a customizable text-to-speech board. Users can type messages or tap buttons containing frequently used phrases and have the app speak them aloud. They can also adjust speaking speed and customize how names and other words are pronounced.
‘With Voice Back I finally sound like myself again’
For Lizzy Hernandez, a Voice Back advisory team member who was diagnosed with ALS in 2023, having a personalized voice made a noticeable difference.
“I felt I sounded like Alexa,” Hernandez said. “With Voice Back I finally sound like myself again.”
Experiences like hers are also helping shape the app. Voice Back’s advisory team includes people living with ALS and other conditions that cause speech loss, who test features and suggest changes based on their own needs and experiences.
The Voice Back app is available on iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. It also works with TD Pilot and other iPad-based eye-gaze systems, allowing people with limited movement to use eye control to operate the app. It currently supports English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, French, Hindi, Japanese, and Chinese.
I have gained back confidence to speak, and it sounds just like me. It has given me back MY VOICE.
For people with ALS, losing the ability to speak doesn’t mean losing what they have to say. Voice Back’s mission is to help people facing speech loss preserve connection, identity, and comfort through the voices they love most.
“When ALS took away my ability to speak, it did not take away what I have to say,” said Kristie L. Taddie, a Voice Back advisory board member who was diagnosed with ALS in May 2025. “Voice Back helps bridge the distance between the voice inside me and the world that still needs to hear it.”
For Kris MacNamara, a former Voice Back advisory team member who was diagnosed with ALS in July 2025 and died earlier this month from the condition, bridging that gap with a voice that sounded like hers helped her feel more comfortable communicating.
“I have gained back confidence to speak, and it sounds just like me,” MacNamara said. “It has given me back MY VOICE.”
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