Musk: Neuralink's Blindsight vision chip to be implanted in humans by 2025

Elon also stated that the vision resolution would be low at first. "It will begin with extremely low-resolution but then over time, the implant would eventually enable vision that is superhuman," said the CEO of Tesla. He further stated that the chip has yielded encouraging monkey results in recent years.

In a tweet on his social media site X, Elon musk discussed the device in greater detail, explaining that Blindsight is meant to enable even those who have lost both eyes and their optic nerve to see. It will even enable those who have been blind from birth to see for the first time.

The device includes a microelectrode array, which is implanted in the brain's visual cortex, the area that processes visual information. It functions by exciting visual cortex neurons following the transmission of patterns from a camera.

In September last year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave Blindsight 'breakthrough' status. This is a status that is awarded to medical devices that provide potential treatment or diagnosis for life-threatening diseases.

Experts have argued that this ranking does not necessarily mean that Neuralink has come up with a cure for blindness but is trying to speed up the development and approval process of such devices.

Musk’s claims about the device have faced criticism in the past for being overly optimistic. “At best, we’re talking about something that’s augmentative to a cane and a guide dog; not something that replaces a cane and a guide dog,” said Philip Troyk, a biomedical engineer at the Illinois Institute of Technology