Neuralink announced that Terry, an ALS patient in the "VOICE" speech recovery trial, used its implanted device to help researchers optimize a "brain-to-voice" interface and said "I love you" to his wife in his natural voice, which he had lost for many years. Training had two phases: first, he mimicked speech actions without producing sound; second, he only needed to "think" words, and the system converted neural signals into speech output using a synthesized voice resembling his pre-illness voice. ABC News reported Terry is the third patient to join the brain-machine interface project, and the demonstration marked an important emotional breakthrough. The VOICE trial, titled "Feasibility Study of Precision Robot-Implanted Brain-Machine Interfaces for Communication Recovery," is registered on ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT07224256) and targets patients with severe speech impairments due to ALS, primary lateral sclerosis, stroke, or spinal cord injuries. It received the FDA's Breakthrough Device Designation, intended to expedite review but not equating to market approval. The N1 implant collects neural discharge signals from the brain's speech planning area via hair-thin electrode wires, wirelessly transmitted to external devices; machine learning maps neural patterns to phonemes, combined into phrases and output as text or synthesized speech. The speech synthesis function is supported by Grok Voice, a subsidiary of xAI. Neuralink said the device remains experimental and has not received FDA or other regulatory approvals