UK Parliament hears its first AI-voiced speech: Baroness Campbell delivers the Health Bill debate in her own voice
Synopsis
For the first time, a member of the UK Parliament addressed a house using an AI-reconstructed voice. Baroness Campbell had relied on an assistant to read her speeches since 2012, as her speaking ability declined with spinal muscular atrophy. She found ElevenLabs' voice cloning herself, uploaded old recordings to rebuild the tone, rhythm and pitch of her voice, then used text-to-speech to generate the speech, played through an assistive device during the Health Bill's Second Reading.
Interpretation
A peer addressed the House of Lords using an AI-generated voice, the first time a member of either UK house has done so. She had depended on an assistant to deliver her speeches since 2012, when the Procedure Committee let the assistant read for her, itself a departure from a 1707 rule barring non-peers from crossing the bar to speak. The speech took place during the Second Reading of the Health Bill, and the Procedure Committee granted her an accommodation for it, the second such accommodation she has received.
The recreated voice was built from her own past recordings, so it carries her original tone, rhythm and pitch rather than a substitute voice. The pipeline is voice cloning plus text-to-speech: old clips of her speaking train an AI voice, and the written speech is converted into audio. The audio was played through an assistive device in the chamber, where she spoke on Personal Health Budgets, a subject central to her campaigning, and described an emotional range she had not been able to use in decades.
Perspective
This report is for researchers and engineers working on assistive technology and institutional accessibility. The demonstrated scope is one parliamentary speech: the voice was cloned from her own old recordings, the text was converted to audio, and the result was played through an assistive device in the chamber with the Procedure Committee's permission. The material states no next experiment or rollout plan.
The account of the effect comes from Baroness Campbell herself, with no independent assessment of voice similarity or listener response. She also stresses that the AI only spoke her own words, and that the speech, arguments and views were entirely hers.