Musician Who Lost His Tongue to Cancer Sings Again Using AI Version of His Own Voice

Musician and songwriter Carl Allocco spent decades using his voice to create music for other people. After cancer led to the complete removal of his tongue and left him unable to sing naturally, that part of his creative life appeared to have been taken away.

Artificial intelligence has now given him another route back into performance. Using recordings made before his illness, technology from AI music company Suno can generate new vocals based on Allocco's own singing voice while he continues writing the songs and making the creative decisions behind them.

Allocco is one of the original song creators for the Songs of Love Foundation, a US charity producing personalised music for children and teenagers facing serious illness, as well as seniors and people living with disabilities. Each song is built around the person receiving it, incorporating details such as their name, interests and favourite things rather than using a generic recording.

After undergoing a complete glossectomy, meaning his tongue was surgically removed, Allocco could no longer sing in the way he had throughout his career. Recordings of his previous performances were instead used to create an AI version of his voice, allowing newly written songs to sound as though they are being performed by the voice he had before surgery.

The distinction is important because AI has not physically restored Allocco's ability to sing, nor is it replacing him as the creator. He remains responsible for the songwriting and artistic choices, with the technology acting as a new vocal tool built from his own earlier performances and used with his permission.

It presents a very different side of the growing debate around AI music. Much of the industry's attention has focused on synthetic performers, copyright disputes and fears that generated songs could replace human musicians, while Allocco's experience shows how the same technology can potentially help an existing artist continue creating after illness or disability changes what they can physically do.

That possibility could eventually extend beyond one musician. Performers who lose their natural singing voice through illness, injury or other circumstances may increasingly be able to preserve part of their creative identity using recordings made earlier in their lives, provided the technology remains under their control and is used with clear consent.

For Allocco, the result means he can continue contributing to the kind of music he had already spent decades creating. AI cannot reverse what cancer took from him, but it has given his songs another way to carry a voice listeners already knew as his.

Image credits: CNN