Charlie Bird shows progress on ‘cloned voice’ as his speech is ‘almost gone’

Journalist and broadcaster Charlie Bird who is to climb Croagh Patrick in April to raise funds for Pieta House and research into Motor Neurone Disease, has said his voice is “now almost gone” from the disease.

However, the veteran broadcaster said he was “in the fortunate position... I will have a cloned voice soon” thanks to a cutting-edge technology being developed in Ireland.

In a video posted on Twitter on Sunday, Mr Bird demonstrated how the new technology was capable of reproducing his voice.

He said he wanted “people with similar voice issues to get the same opportunity as me”.

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To that end, he encouraged people to join him on April 2nd on his planned climb, or to arrange other events for the two charities.

Mr Bird received a diagnosis of motor neuron disease (MND), a degenerative condition that can affect the voice in its early stages, last October.

Based on existing software, the voice “banking” solution has been developed by Keith Davey, founder of Marino Software in Dublin and Trevor Vaugh, assistant professor at the Department of Design Innovation in NUI Maynooth. The pair had developed a similar voice substitute for an episode of RTÉ’s Big Life Fix three years ago.

Today, the available technology has improved three-fold, rendering a cloned voice virtually indistinguishable from its human source.

Speaking to The Irish Times earlier this month about the technology, Mr Bird said: "It's given me a whole new lease of life. I can now talk to my kids, my grandkids, with my own voice."

Making use of almost four decades of his voice in the RTÉ Archives , his wife Claire produced three hours of clear audio which will be used as the voice bank in future, to help him to communicate. The technology will allow him to carry on talking as normal, even when he can no longer speak.

Claire added: “The whole point of this is that we want this to be available to anyone who has any issues with their voice.”

Over €160,000 has been raised to date under the Climb With Charlie campaign. People can register at www.climbwithcharlie.ie