Strange as this may seem, Amazon has introduced a feature that makes its virtual assistant imitated voices of people who have passed away. The demonstration of this function was made by Rohit Prasad, chief scientist for Alexa IA of the company. It took place during the annual MARS conference and left many people with their heads scratching.
Even though AI can’t eliminate the pain of loss, it can definitely make your memories last.
Rohit Prasad
With these words, the company’s chief scientist has begun a demonstration that may even seem surreal. The video shows a little boy asking Alexa to read the book “The Wizard of Oz” in the voice of her late grandmother. Something AI can do with great ease.
The display of the material lasts a short time, but manages to stir up curiosity and various other feelings on the part of any viewer. Thus, Rohit Prasad points out that having human attributes in Alexa and other artificial intelligences is important, especially in times of pandemic, as many have lost someone they love.
According to the presentation, AI systems can learn to imitate an individual’s voice with just one minute of recorded audio. That is, it would not be anything complicated for a person to make different uses for a voice message, whether from someone who has passed away or not.
On the other hand, Amazon has not at any time confirmed whether this role will be made available to users. It can be something focused on testing or to be used in other Alexa tools, for example. In that case, we’ll have to wait for news.
Alexa’s appeal is controversial, but it’s also common
If you were uncomfortable with the idea of using your virtual assistant to hear the voice of a deceased relative, don’t worry. This is an understandable feeling, just like any other related to this information.
However, this type of feature is something much more common than it seems. Industries such as video games and film have been making use of the so-called “deepfakes” audio for a long time.
Overall, we can summarize this as the act of generating a synthetic voice through an AI.
In this way, various applications such as Resemble, ReSpeecher, and iSpeech can clone anyone’s voices within minutes of recording. The usefulness of this is varied, but is commonly used for fiction and play in the hands of ordinary users.
The big difference is that Amazon has great popularity, which makes it dictate the rules in the area of technology.
What do you think of this Alexa function? Tell us!