CLEVELAND, Ohio — A local AI entrepreneur is teaming up with a brain researcher to test whether studying damaged brains — those of stroke patients — can help create smaller, more energy-efficient artificial intelligence models.

Jeff Charney, the longtime pitchman known for characters like Progressive’s Flo and the Aflac Duck , is launching a joint venture with Julius Fridriksson, the vice president of research at the University of South Carolina. Fridriksson has spent decades researching the brains of stroke victims who suffer from aphasia, a language disorder often caused by traumatic brain injuries.

Charney’s MKHSTRY firm and Fridriksson’s NXTLLM are creating a joint venture called Allt.ai. They are introducing a technology called the Brain-LLM Unified Model, or BLUM, that could in

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