For people living with ALS, communication is a race against time. As the disease progresses, speech becomes harder, then impossible. The window for capturing a person's natural voice — their cadence, their personality, their sound — closes fast.
As speech intelligibility declines, support in communication is critically important in ALS management, as communication using natural speech becomes difficult and frustrating for both patients and caregivers.
The Scott-Morgan Foundation has launched an AI-powered initiative using voice cloning to allow individuals with ALS to speak in their own voice through a computer, along with AI avatars that maintain visual presence and facial expressions. The technology draws on large language models trained on a person's own writings — emails, social media posts — to generate responses that sound authentically like them.
This is the cutting edge. But there's a more immediate need: people in the early and middle stages of ALS who need something that works right now, today, on the phone they already own. Something that amplifies what voice remains, builds phrases quickly, and keeps them connected to the people they love.
That's where apps like Leslie come in. Not as a final solution — but as a bridge. A way to stay communicative, independent, and present while the technology catches up.
If someone you know has ALS, the time to explore communication tools is before they're urgently needed — not after.