This Quebec man is losing his voice. An AI tool is helping bring it back to life – CBC
‘The disease can’t take my voice away,’ says Dr. Alec Cooper, who has ALS
Jun 30, 2025
Leaning into a small microphone in a Quebec City studio, Dr. Alec Cooper takes a breath and reads out part of the often-quoted “To be, or not to be” soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
“It’s pretty dramatic,” said Cooper, backing away from the microphone and letting out a laugh.
“I just realized, my God, it really is talking about death.”
It’s a subject Cooper says he’s been forced to think about over the past year and a half after he was diagnosed with ALS, a terminal motor neuron disease. He was initially given an average life expectancy of two to five years.
The family doctor, originally from Victoria, had 1,800 patients before announcing his snap retirement last year.
Staying busy renovating his house to become wheelchair accessible, Cooper has also been spending more time in front of a microphone — recording common sayings, elaborate poems and his favourite book passages as part of the process to clone his voice for when the disease progresses further.
