Whether you find it comforting or scary depends on your temperament, but Amazon has found a way to talk to Alexa in the voice of anyone – including a dead relative.
This feature was explained by Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and chief scientist of the Alexa team, during Amazon’s Re: Mars conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, June 22nd.
According to CNBCPrasad said engineers installed AI technology to create a way for his digital assistant to duplicate a voice after listening to the speaker’s recorded audio for just one minute.
In an exhibition video played at the event, a child says, “Alexa, can Grandma finish me reading?” Wizard of Oz? “After accepting the child’s request in a normal voice, Alexa began to speak in the same voice as the child’s grandmother. The dead grandmother, that.
Prasad said engineers are still working to improve a deepfeck feature, and declined to say when Amazon might release it so that interested customers can back up and launch long-term Granddad.
If raising the dead seems a little too much, you can talk to Alexa in the voice of someone alive, such as your baby, brother, sister, mother, father, best friend, and even yourself.
At Wednesday’s event, however, Prasad highlighted the fact that the feature could be used to capture the memory of a loved one who died, referring to how many special people were lost during the epidemic.
“While AI may not alleviate the pain of that loss, it can certainly perpetuate memories,” he said.
The feature is one step away from enabling people to have normal and meaningful conversations that the beloved has passed away, which includes comments and references to past events related to that person, as in the early days. Black mirror Episode (B right backSeries 2) where a woman is able to communicate with her late partner through messaging.
Amazon has taken a small step towards this with Alexa Conversation Mode, which aims to provide a more natural voice experience with digital assistants. Marry it to the voice of a dead relative, and feed some personality data to process Amazon’s AI, and science fiction could soon become a science fact.
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