Your voice may reveal how fast you're aging, new AI 'speech clock' suggests

A new artificial intelligence tool that examines speech patterns could potentially reveal users' age and risk of cognitive decline or dementia, according to a recent study. The AI analyzes over 700 distinct features, such as pauses, speaking speed, pitch, vocabulary, and emotional expression, to estimate a person's actual age. In a study involving nearly 3,000 Spanish-speaking adults, those whose estimated age exceeded their actual age were more likely to exhibit cognitive issues, dementia, and signs of accelerated biological aging.

They also tended to have poorer social and economic circumstances compared to other participants. Existing "aging clocks" typically rely on expensive, invasive, or difficult-to-repeat brain scans or blood tests, but speech analysis could overcome these limitations, researchers argue. However, further testing is needed to determine the tool's accuracy and potential to predict dementia risk in individual patients and other languages.