The video documents a home visit to the Smith family, where Brad (Bradford) Smith, an ALS patient, prepares for and demonstrates his Neuralink N1 brain‑computer interface (BCI) implant. Tiffany Smith explains Brad’s current reliance on eye‑gaze communication and its limitations, especially in bright environments. The Neuralink team, accompanied by Elon Musk, describes the implant’s flexible "thread" electrodes, the surgical robot, and placement in the motor cortex. Post‑surgery, Brad practices imagined hand motions to control a cursor, plays simple video‑game‑style tasks, and interacts with a new AI‑driven chat app that can adjust tone and uses a digitally recreated version of his voice generated via ElevenLabs. The family shares personal moments—children’s greetings, playground outings, and excitement about Brad being able to communicate without eye‑gaze. Throughout, the tone is hopeful and supportive, emphasizing the potential life‑changing impact of the technology for Brad and his family.
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They're here. Neuralink is here. Welcome back. Good. I've got Brad upstairs. Let's start upstairs, then he can give feedback. Yeah, with the— in the bed setting. Um, Brad, I'm gonna move you back, and do you want me to put the curtain up so you have less of that light? I'm gonna get rid of this.
Yeah.
So right now, for Brad to communicate, he uses eye gaze. So that means he looks at the computer. There's a tracker that uses infrared to bounce a signal off the back of his retina and back. So he can look at a specific spot, and if he looks long enough, then it clicks. So he can look there and click.
Hi, my name is Bradford Smith. I usually go by Brad. I also answer to "Hey ya cripple" and I have been called much worse things. I have been living with ALS for 6 years now.
Seems like he's having a hard time calibrating right now, so...
ALS stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. It is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that affects the nerve cells that control voluntary muscles. "I am so excited for the implant because I hope to control the computer without my eyes. I want to move my cursor without looking at it constantly. I want to click and drag. I want to scroll and read at the same time." Do you know how hard those simple things are with eye gaze? I hope you never have to find out. And, if Neuralink succeeds, Maybe nobody will have to learn that again. I am honored to be a part of this mission.
So we basically, the way we think the BCI team in Neuralink, we are your pit crew. You'll be on the wheels to drive the BCI and we're all here to support you. This is the team and they basically work on trying to make sense of the neural data we record from your brain and to translate it to something useful for you, either moving the cursor on the screen to click maybe handwriting or even playing games on a gaming console.
I am so excited for Neuralink because we're going to be able to go outside. We live in sunny Arizona, but he can control the eye gaze better if he's in a place that doesn't have changes in lighting. And so we keep everything pretty dark. So we close all the blinds and the windows. There's a lot of sun a lot of the day, and he's without communication if we go outside because it's just too bright to be able to control it. So he misses out on a lot of things because it's really uncomfortable to go to, say, the kids' soccer game or go over to the pool and watch him swim, because if he needs help, he can't communicate that in any way. Brad and I have 3 kids. Lincoln is our oldest. He is 12 now. Edison is our number 2 and he's 9. And Abigail is our youngest and she's 7 now. Hello, welcome to the crazy house.
Hi, Abigail.
What do you got there? You got a lot of candy from trick-or-treat?
Yeah.
So Ewan was hoping to FaceTime Brad and the family.
Uh-huh.
In 2 minutes.
In 2 minutes?
Yeah.
This is the thing, you need to go to Target.
Oh, hey, Yvonne. Hey, dude.
Hey, I want to introduce you to Brad and his family.
Hi. Hi.
Hello, everyone.
Thanks for taking the time to say hi to us. We're super excited about tomorrow.
I hope this is a game changer for you and your family.
I am so excited to get this in my head and stop using eye gaze.
Sounds good. This could really be a really big difference. I don't know if you guys play video games with your dad and otherwise have some good times, you know?
Yep, they are excited for that potential to spend more time playing video games with Dad. So thank you so much.
You're most welcome.
Bye.
Bye. Bye.
Family time's important.
Yeah, it absolutely is.
So we'll catch up after and hope it's an awesome outcome.
Okay, awesome. We're excited to work with the whole team.
Help! Help!
I'm being repressed! Not for long. Not for long. All right, nice to meet you. You too.
Bye. Bye, Yolan.
We'll keep you posted.
All right, sounds good.
Thanks, Jake.
So this is the implant that we call N1 implant. It has these really flexible thin wires, tiny wires that are called threads. Each of these are about 1/5 of a human hair, so you can actually even touch them if you want. Obviously, even though we have very talented surgeons, it's going to be impossible for them to hand maneuver them, right? So we built an entire robot.
It's just really hard.
Lincoln, you can work for DJ.
We do constantly look for young talent.
Thank you.
Thank you for coming and taking the time. Of course.
I'm the richest person in the world.
Hello, how are you?
Good, how are you? Doing good. Oh, wow.
Looks fantastic.
Looking awesome, Brad.
How are you today?
So it looks like a plastic surgeon did the surgery because it's just so nice.
Yeah, this is looking great. We'll take the rest of the staples out.
I knew it was going to be a whirlwind, more or less. We went from having Neuralink at our home, working with Brad.
How's it going, Brad? Good to see you today.
A few hours in the morning and then again a few hours in the afternoon every day.
So the very first imagine motion we'll try is similar to driving a car stick shift. So you'll be imagining your left hand performing these actions.
The Neuralink is put in the motor cortex. Most everybody uses their hand to control a cursor, so they're trying to link up intended hand motions to control the cursor.
I would recommend as the next one you try that you imagine holding your hand Almost over a ball.
The Neuralink crew is great. In and out.
Oh, you got it.
We're just trying to learn what we need to learn, and they keep saying it's a marathon, not a sprint.
Wow.
Work of art on that downstroke.
Yeah.
Mommy! He's— I heard him using your hand.
It's just interesting to watch. In my head, it's like, oh, he's controlling it with his eyes because that's how he's done everything for the last 4 years. He's doing this, but it's not with his eyes, and this is, like, amazing what this could become.
This is Sahed.
Hey, Brad. Good morning, Brad. This is Sahed here from Neuralink. So, yeah, the plan today is we wanted to play around with the chat app. We just added a couple new features.
Most recently, We're working on the chat app.
All right, let me go ahead— sorry about that, that's my fault.
It listens to what the other person has to say, and then it uses AI to come up with a response based on the context of the conversation.
It disappears too fast.
Yeah, I think when someone says something too, it kind of regenerates the prompt. As well.
Yeah, totally. We want to tune that a bit more.
If Sami were here, we'd already have this solved.
That's a lie.
I'm definitely happy to have anything to keep me in the conversation. We are working together to make it better. My problem is that I enjoy the ridiculous answers it gives me.
We did like a—
Sorry, I'm being a bit of a jerk. I'll tone it down. But seriously, folks, I have spent years trying to decide what to say in a conversation.
So the next thing we can do is set up some custom tones, and then from there we can update to a version of the chat app that lets you actually set your tones.
Just recently in the last couple of days, they've played with it and tweaked it so that it can change the intonation quite a bit and say it in a serious tone or a joking tone or an angry tone.
Let me know if there's anything else you need.
You talk about his voice and how it's changed.
Yeah. So we had recordings of his voice and we were able to recreate a digital AI voice. That's been really fun to hear.
It is actually weird to hear my voice after years of not hearing it. I have been working with ElevenLabs to do the voice work. I recorded myself reading some things on my phone years ago. The recordings were enough to make a pretty good copy of my voice. I always hated to hear my voice on recordings, but I don't mind it now. It also makes my friends and family really happy to hear my voice again.
Okay, you guys ready?
Yeah. No, I'm still speaking.
I am absolutely doing more with Neuralink than I was doing with eye gaze. I have been a Batman for a long time, but I go outside now. Going outside has been a huge blessing for me, and I can control the computer with telepathy.
Dad's watching. Look, he's watching on the camera.
Did we lose one of the arms?
I love being with my kids on the playground or at the pool.
3, okay, 2, 1.
It is more work for Tiffany, unfortunately. Tiffany is the greatest person I've ever known, and I get to spend eternity with her. My kids are doing good, especially under the circumstances. Life is good.
Are you gonna play, Abby? Yeah, Abigail needs to be Mario. Abigail is green. Um, oh, Dad, you want this normal one? Okay, let's go. Dad's moving. Dad needs 6 right now. You're welcome, Dad. Edison. And I won! Yeah, you won. You, you won.
