Ed Riefenstahl continues teaching with AI voice

Ed Riefenstahl is the Director of Experiential Learning at TCU’s Neeley School of Business.  In 2021, he suffered a traumatic brain injury from a fall and was later diagnosed with bulbar palsy, a condition that weakens the muscles used for speaking and swallowing. It does not get better, and there is no cure.

By early 2023, Ed’s speech had deteriorated to the point where teaching became a challenge. That summer, he reached out to us after reading a press release from Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton, who shared her experience using ElevenLabs’ AI voice tools to manage speech challenges caused by Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP).

We used recordings of Ed’s voice from before the injury to create a custom voice clone that captured his natural cadence and tone. By early August, we were ready. “Hearing your voice again when you thought it was gone,” Ed shared, “it felt like a part of me was restored.” And getting this part of his personal identity back let him connect with his students on familiar terms again.

In August, Ed shared his story with a business information systems class at TCU. He played the progression of his voice: his current speech, a robotic-sounding text-to-speech output, and finally the AI-cloned voice that matched how he used to sound. Watch his story below:

Ed’s new voice lets him teach with the confidence that his students can focus on what he says. “If not for finding this, I don’t know where I’d be today,” he shared. For us, Ed’s story shows what voice AI can make possible: helping people communicate in ways that feel natural and true to who they are.