# Amazon's Alexa could soon speak in a dead relative's voice



## Leeda.the.Paladin (Jun 23, 2022)

Do you miss the sound of a dead relative's voice?

Well fear not: Amazon unveiled a new feature in the works for its virtual assistant Alexa that can read aloud in a deceased loved one's voice based on a short recording of the person.

"While AI can't eliminate that pain of loss, it can definitely make their memories last," said Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa, on Wednesday at Amazon's re:MARS conference in Las Vegas. 

In a video played at the event, an Amazon Echo Dot is asked: "Alexa, can Grandma finish reading me 'The Wizard of Oz'?"

"OK," Alexa's voice responded.


Instead of Alexa's voice reading the book, it's the kid's grandma's voice," Prasad said. "We had to learn to produce a high quality voice with less than a minute of recording."

He added: "We are unquestionably living in the golden era of AI, where our dreams and science fiction are becoming a reality." 

Indeed, the feature immediately drew comparisons to fictional depictions of technology, but ones more bleak than what Prasad was likely referencing, like Black Mirror, the dystopian television series that featured an episode in which comparable technology was deployed.


The feature is still in development, and Amazon would not say when it might publicly launch, but its preview comes at a moment when the cutting-edge capabilities of artificial intelligence are under close scrutiny. 

In particular, debate among researchers has sharpened about what is known as deepfakes, or video or audio that is rendered with AI to make it appear as if someone did or said something that never happened. 

It also comes shortly after a Google engineer sparked controversy for arguing the company's sophisticated chatbot communicated as if it was sentient, a claim that did not have the support of the AI research community but nonetheless underscored the freakishly human-like communication skills of the software. 

Big Tech companies are increasingly studying AI's impact on society. Microsoft recently announced it was restricting the use of software that mimics a person's voice, saying the feature could be weaponized by those trying to impersonate speakers as an act of deception.


Kambhampati said the Alexa feature has the potential to aid a bereft family member, though it has to be weighed against a variety of moral questions the technology presents. 

"For people in grieving, this might actually help in the same way we look back and watch videos of the departed," he said. "But it comes with serious ethical issues, like is it OK to do this without the deceased person's consent?"


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## Black Ambrosia (Jun 23, 2022)

Creepy but I can see it being popular.


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## Peppermynt (Jun 24, 2022)

I swear the writers of Black Mirror are prescient.


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## nichelle02 (Jun 25, 2022)

Just no. I kept my brother's voice mail message and texts for a long time. I treasure his memory. But, no to this.


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## MizAvalon (Jun 26, 2022)

OMG…NO. I would burst into tears every time I heard the voice.


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## nysister (Jun 27, 2022)

I'd like it. My Dad had a beautiful voice. If I heard it when I expected it, it would make me smile. I wouldn't want to be surprised by it though, that would be emotionally overwhelming.


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## snoop (Jul 5, 2022)

Call me paranoid, but things like this and the 10 Year Challenge will make it easier for certain people to have been at a scene of a crime when they weren't.


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## fifi134 (Jul 7, 2022)

@snoop What’s the 10 year challenge?


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## snoop (Jul 7, 2022)

fifi134 said:


> @snoop What’s the 10 year challenge?



It was on social media a few years ago.  You were to post a picture of what you looked like "today" vs 10 years ago.  I'm so skeptical about a lot of online stuff...not because I don't want tech to progress, but because I don't like how it is used to manipulate people.

A lot of people posted because they felt good about how they're aging gracefully, but I read after that the information that was collected was helping AI to learn about how people age and in turn how to age people. Previously, computers/AI wasn't good at aging us since mostly everything created is crated for white people, but the collection of information of Black people through the Challenge was supposed to help them correct this problem.


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