Key Highlights
- Amazon Alexa might speak in the voice of a deceased relative
- Alexa will be able to hear that person speak for a minute and mimic the voice
- Amazon said it wants to make memories last
Imagine if your smart speaker starts speaking in the voice of a deceased family member. Does it sound creepy or would it make you happy? Amazon is developing a feature that will let Alexa mimic the voice of your dead relative.
The new feature was described as a way to “make memories last” on Wednesday at Amazon’s Re: MARS (Machine Learning, Automation, Robots, and Space) conference.
Senior Vice President of Alexa Rohit Prasad gave a brief demonstration of a potential future function for Alexa, i.e., the ability to mimic voices. It’s equally shocking—or even more so—that Alexa would be able to imitate the voices of people we’ve lost or who are no longer with us.
While announcing the feature, Rohit Prasad stated that although artificial intelligence (AI) cannot take away the sadness of losing a loved one, “it can absolutely make the memories last”.
Prasad then played a video in which a young child asked Alexa “Can grandma finish reading me The Wizard of OZ”. On hearing the request, Alexa acknowledges the child’s request in her usual voice and begins reading in the child’s grandmother’s voice after responding “okay”.
It’s unclear how far along the feature is in development or when Alexa voice assistants might start receiving it. However, it does raise concerns regarding this technology being misused by cybercriminals and scammers. This could be misused that allow people to use the voice of celebrities or other people without their consent.
How Does This Feature Work?
If you’re curious as to how this feature works, Amazon told Engadget that the new talent of Alexa can produce a synthetic voiceprint of a person’s voice after listening to a recording of it for less than a minute.
The advancements that the company has achieved in text-to-speech technology are what drive it. Amazon recently released a whitepaper outlining these improvements in which it claimed that a “Voice Filter” may be used to mimic speech for Alexa in as little as one minute.
