This article first appeared in The Checkup,MIT Technology Reviewsweekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first,sign up here. Over the past couple of weeks, Ive been speaking to people who have lost their voices. Both Joyce Esser, who lives in the UK, and Jules Rodriguez, who lives in Miami, Florida, have forms of motor neuron diseasea class of progressive disorders that result in the gradual loss of the ability to move and control muscles. Its a crushing diagnosis for everyone involved. Juless wife, Maria, told me that once it was official, she and Jules left the doctors office gripping each other in floods of tears. Their lives were turned upside down. Four and a half years later, Jules cannot move his limbs, and a tracheostomy has left him unable to speak. To say this diagnosis has been devastating is an understatement, says Joyce, who has bulbar MNDshe can still move her limbs but struggles to speak and swallow. Losing my voice has been a massive deal for me because its such a big part of who I am. AI is bringing back those lost voices. Both Jules and Joyce have fed an AI tool built by ElevenLabs recordings of their old voices to re-create them. Today, they can speak in their old voices by typing sentences into devices, selecting letters by hand or eye gaze. Its been a remarkable and extremely emotional experience for themboth thought theyd lost their voices for good. But speaking through a device has limitations. Its slow, and it doesnt sound completely natural. And, strangely, users might be limited in what theyre allowed to say. Joyce doesnt use her voice clone all that often. She finds it impractical for everyday conversations. But she does like to hear her old voice and will use it on occasion. One such occasion was when she was waiting for her husband, Paul, to get ready to go out. Joyce typed a message for her voice clone to read out: Come on, Hunnie, get your arse in gear!! She then added: Id better get my knickers on too!!! The next day I got a warning from ElevenLabs that I was using inappropriate language and not to do it again!!! Joyce told me via email (we communicated with a combination of email, speech, text-to-voice tools, and a writing board). She wasnt sure what had been inappropriate, exactly. Its not as though shed used any especially vile languagejust, as she puts it, normal British banter between a couple getting ready to go out. Joyce assumed that one of the words shed used had been automatically flagged up by the prudish American computer, and that once someone from the ElevenLabs team had assessed the warning, it would be dismissed. Well, apparently not, because the next day a human banned me!!!! says Joyce. She says she felt mortified. Id just got my voice back and now theyd taken it away from me and only two days after Id done a presentation to my local MND group telling them how amazing ElevenLabs were. Joyce contacted ElevenLabs, who apologized and reinstated her account. But its still not clear why she was banned in the first place. When I first asked Sophia Noel, a company representative, about the incident, she directed me to the companys prohibited use policy. There are rules against threatening child safety, engaging in illegal behavior, providing medical advice, impersonating others, interfering with elections, and more. But theres nothing specifically about inappropriate language. I asked Noel about this, and she said that Joyces remark was most likely interpreted as a threat. ElevenLabs terms of use state that the company does not have any obligation to screen, edit, or monitor content but add that it may terminate or suspend access to its services when content is reasonably likely, in our sole determination, to violate applicable law or [the user] Terms. ElevenLabs has a moderation tool that screens content to ensure it aligns with our Terms of Service, says Dustin Blank, head of partnerships at the company. The question is: Should companies be screening the language of people with motor neuron disease? After all, thats not how other communication devices for people with this condition work. People with MND are usually advised to bank their voices as soon as they canto record set phrases that can be used to create a synthetic voice that sounds a bit like them, albeit a somewhat robotic-sounding version. (Jules recently joked that his sounded like a Daft Punk song at quarter speed.) Banked voices arent subject to the same scrutiny, says Joyces husband, Paul. Joyce was told you can put whatever [language] you want in there, he says. Voice banking wasnt an option for Joyce, whose speech had already deteriorated by the time she was diagnosed with MND. Jules did bank his voice but doesnt tend to use it, because the voice clone sounds so much better. Joyce doesnt hold a grudgeand her experience is far from universal. Jules uses the same technology, but he hasnt received any warnings about his languageeven though a comedy routine he performs using his voice clone contains plenty of curse words, says his wife, Maria. He opened a recent set by yelling Fuck you guys! at the audiencehis way of ensuring they dont give him any pity laughs, he joked. That comedy set is even promoted on the ElevenLabs website. Blank says language like that used by Joyce is no longer restricted. There is no specific swear ban that I know of, says Noel. Thats just as well. People living with MND should be able to say whatever is on their mind, even swearing, says Richard Cave of the MND Association in the UK, who helps people with MND set up their voice clones. Theres plenty to swear about. Now read the rest of The Checkup Read more from MIT Technology Reviews archive You can read more about how voice clones are re-creating the voices of people with motor neuron disease in this story. Researchers are working to create realistic avatars of people with strokes and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis that can be controlled via a brain implant. Last year, two such individuals were able to use these devices to speak at a rate of around 60 to 70 words per minutehalf the rate of typical speech, but more than four times faster than had previously been achieved using a similar approach. Other people with ALS who are locked incompletely paralyzed but cognitively ablehave used brain implants to communicate, too. A few years ago, a man in Germany used such a device to ask for massages and beer, and to tell his son he loved him. Several companies are working on creating hyperrealistic avatars. Dont call them deepfakes they prefer to think of them as synthetic media, writes my former colleague Melissa Heikkil, who created her own avatar with the company Synthesia. ElevenLabs tool can be used to create humanlike speech in 32 languages. Meta is building a model that can translate over 100 languages into 36 other languages. From around the web Covid-19 conspiracy theoristssome of whom believe the virus is an intentionally engineered bioweaponwill soon be heading US agencies. Some federal workers are worried they may be out for revenge against current and former employees. (Wired) Cats might have spread bird flu to humansand vice versa. Thats according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which published the finding but then abruptly removed it. (The New York Times) And a dairy worker is confirmed to have been infected with a second strain of bird flu that more recently spilled over from birds to cows. The persons only symptom was conjunctivitis. 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