When Rep. Jennifer Wexton gave remarks on the House floor Thursday, she spoke using a voice that she and her colleagues thought they’d never hear again. After a rare neurological disorder affected her ability to speak, the Virginia Democrat now enlists artificial intelligence to speak using her old voice.
"I can no longer give the same kind of impassioned impromptu speeches during debates on the floor or in committee hearings," Wexton said using assistive technology. "This very impressive AI recreation of my voice does the public speaking for me now." Wexton flipped her Virginia seat in 2018 as part of that year’s “blue wave.
” In April of last year, she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. “If there’s one thing that Democrats and Republicans can agree on, it’s that Parkinson’s Disease sucks,” she said in a video announcement . Five months later, she shared a modified diagnosis : progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare brain disease she describes as "Parkinson's Disease on steroids.
" She also announced she would not seek reelection. In May, she began delivering remarks on the House floor using text-to speech technology . ElevenLabs, a software company that works to create natural-sounding speech synthesis, reached out to Wexton’s office with the goal of making a voice model program that sounded like herself, and not the robotic voice associated with the traditional text-to-speech app.
“Our technology gives individuals who have lost their voice the abi.