The Privacy Implications of a Decoder

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"We're actually reading thoughts out of someone's head, which I feel like is crossing a line into something that a lot of people will be kind of unnerved by," he says. "Can you use one decoder that works on anyone or the brain signals very specific to each person? Yeah, absolutely not." He adds: "I don't think we necessarily want to have that kind of technology in the world, at least yet, before we ... have a good legal framework around it"

For the first time, researchers have found a way to non-invasively translate a person’s thoughts into text. Using fMRI scans and an AI-based decoder trained on a precursor to ChatGPT, the system can reconstruct brain activity to interpret the gist of a story someone is listening to, watching or even just imagining telling. Ian Sample speaks to one of the team behind the breakthrough, the neuroscientist Dr Alex Huth, to find out how it works, where they hope to use it, and whether our mental privacy could soon be at risk. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod