SpikeVox: Towards Energy-Efficient Speech Therapy Framework with Spike-driven Generative Language Models
This addresses the global access gap for speech therapy patients by offering a low-energy solution, though it appears incremental in combining existing components like speech recognition with a novel spike-driven model.
The paper tackles the problem of providing accessible and energy-efficient speech therapy by proposing SpikeVox, a framework that uses spike-driven generative language models for speech disorder detection and therapy recommendations, achieving 88% average confidence in recognition and complete feedback.
Speech disorders can significantly affect the patients capability to communicate, learn, and socialize. However, existing speech therapy solutions (e.g., therapist or tools) are still limited and costly, hence such solutions remain inadequate for serving millions of patients worldwide. To address this, state-of-the-art methods employ neural network (NN) algorithms to help accurately detecting speech disorders. However, these methods do not provide therapy recommendation as feedback, hence providing partial solution for patients. Moreover, these methods incur high energy consumption due to their complex and resource-intensive NN processing, hence hindering their deployments on low-power/energy platforms (e.g., smartphones). Toward this, we propose SpikeVox, a novel framework for enabling energy-efficient speech therapy solutions through spike-driven generative language model. Specifically, SpikeVox employs a speech recognition module to perform highly accurate speech-to-text conversion; leverages a spike-driven generative language model to efficiently perform pattern analysis for speech disorder detection and generates suitable exercises for therapy; provides guidance on correct pronunciation as feedback; as well as utilizes the REST API to enable seamless interaction for users. Experimental results demonstrate that SpikeVox achieves 88% confidence level on average in speech disorder recognition, while providing a complete feedback for therapy exercises. Therefore, SpikeVox provides a comprehensive framework for energy-efficient speech therapy solutions, and potentially addresses the significant global speech therapy access gap.