Voice banking, or voice preservation, refers to a procedure where an individual is recorded while they speak a large volume of phrases. Specialized software uses these recordings to create an artificial voice that resembles the individual's.
The phrases are specially chosen to capture the widest possible variety of sounds, known as phonemes. Several phrases are used so that each phoneme is encountered multiple times; this increases the quality of the sampling and reduces the impact of a mispronounced word during recording.
The quality of the recording is directly impacted by the individual's ability to speak; in the case of ALS, it is important to make the recordings early on before speech capability has declined.
In 2023, Apple released Personal Voice, which is available on iPhone, iPad, and macOS. Older hardware devices do not have Personal Voice available. The individual must read 150 phrases aloud. In the case of the English language corpus, many of these phrases are United States history centric.
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It is common for ALS patients to record audio messages of themselves reading books aloud, making statements such as “I love you”, or making birthday wishes, and so forth.
See also: Memory Preservation