Synchron Announces Brain Interface Chat Powered by OpenAI

The brain implant firm Synchron backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, has revealed another advancement as it seeks to remain ahead of Elon Musk’s Neuralink venture.

The brain-computer interface (BCI) company announced the integration of generative AI, powered by OpenAI, into its BCI platform in a new chat feature.

Synchron had received US regulatory clearance for human trials as far as back in 2021 and has already completed studies in four people in Australia.

Brain-computer interface (BCI)

That company’s BCI platform also allows paralysed people to text and type by thinking alone.

In September 2023 it was revealed that Synchron brain-computer interface had been implanted in first six patients in the United States.

Now in July 2024 the firm has announced that with OpenAI’s advanced generative AI system, it has further enhanced the capability of its BCI technology to enable people with severe paralysis who have lost upper limb mobility to interact with the digital world hands-free, through thought alone.

Essentially, Synchron’s BCI chat feature, powered by OpenAI, is designed to be simple to use and easy to learn.

It can now generate automated prompts for texting and chatting, categorised by contextual inputs, including the user’s emotion.

Synchron said it does not share the BCI user’s brain data with OpenAI.

Game changer

“As someone who will likely lose the ability to communicate as my disease progresses, this technology gives me hope that in the future I’ll still have a way to easily connect with loved ones. This will be a game changer,” said Mark, a person living with ALS who is using Synchron’s BCI platform.

Synchron provided this video demonstration of Mark using the tech. Mark requested his surname be withheld for privacy reasons.

“Our users have lost the ability to make choices due to neurological disorders. Generative AI can offer predictions that are contextual to your environment, and the BCI enables individual choices to be made,” said Tom Oxley, CEO & Founder, Synchron.

“BCIs preserve and extend a fundamental human right: the freedom of expression,” said Oxley. “We take our autonomy for granted, until it is gone. This is a pivotal moment at the convergence of powerful technologies that can restore lives.”

The firm noted that OpenAI’s multimodal GPT generates content across text and audio, allowing for more natural, real-time human-AI interactions. This is critical for individuals with neurological disorders, who may otherwise have trouble generating complex responses contextual to their environment.

Synchron said it will continue to assess state-of-the-art LLMs that best suit the needs of Synchron BCI users.

No invasive surgery

Unlike Elon Musk’s Neuralink which directly implants a device onto a person’s brain (requiring open brain surgery), the Synchron BCI is a stent-like device that is instead implanted in the blood vessel on the surface of the motor cortex of the brain via the jugular vein, through a minimally-invasive endovascular procedure.

Once implanted, it is designed to detect and wirelessly transmit motor intent out of the brain, intended to restore the capability for severely paralysed people to control personal devices with hands-free point-and-click.

Synchron said the updated BCI platform, powered by OpenAI’s generative AI models, offers users the ability to text more efficiently. This includes faster response times, natural conversational speeds and interaction with texting.

Synchron was founded in 2012,and is one of a number of companies such as Paradromics, Precision Neuroscience and Elon Musk’s Neuralink that have been working to build and commercialise BCI systems in recent years.

Neuralink for example benefits from Elon Musk for publicity purposes, but Synchron also has some big name backers.

In December 2022 it received a $75 million financing round that included funding from the investment firms of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.