Science & Technology

Amazon Alexa will be able to mimic the voice of a dead relative

By T.K. Randall
June 23, 2022

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) During Amazon's re:MARS conference recently, the online shopping giant announced that it was developing a feature that would enable its Alexa smart home assistant to speak using the voice of someone who has died.

Senior Vice President Rohit Prasad provided a demonstration of this technology by having Alexa read a bedtime story in the voice of a deceased grandmother.

Now if this all sounds a bit unsettling, then that's because it is - in fact a similar idea was used in the plot of an episode of Black Mirror, which should tell you just how weird this actually is.According to Prasad, Alexa will be capable of learning to speak in someone's voice after listening to just one minute of recorded speech from that person.

This also suggests that the device could listen to someone's conversation and then learn how to mimic their voice, no doubt adding to the concerns many people have about having devices like this in their home.

Whether this particular feature will make it into the actual product, however, remains to be seen.

Source: Gizmodo

Tags: Amazon