Amazon’s Alexa has announced that it will launch software capable of summoning a creepy personal assistant from beyond the grave.
Amazon’s Alexa has announced that it will release software capable of impersonating the dead.
The update is reported to make Alexa able to copy any voice after listening to less than a minute of audio. creating the possibility for the device to supplant the dead relatives of the users.
Alexa senior vice president Rohit Prasad said the company’s goal was to “make memories last after so many of us have lost someone we love.”
Speaking at Amazon’s Re: Mars conference in Las Vegas this Wednesday, Prasad stated that we are “living in the golden age of artificial intelligence” where computers are increasingly capable of making unthinkable feats.
“We’re definitely living in the golden age of AI, where our dreams and science fiction are becoming a reality,” he said.
A video segment showing the new feature showed a boy who asked, “Alexa, can Grandma finish reading me the Wizard of Oz?”
Alexa immediately understood the order and switched to a softer tone imitating an older woman.
Prasad noted that the new technology has allowed the company to produce high quality audio with very limited samples.
“The way we’ve made it possible is to approach the problem as a voice conversion task and not as a voice generation pathway,” he said.
The development came after a recent controversy over user privacy after a woman revealed that Amazon stored snippets of her voice.
An Amazon spokesman said users had full control over what the multinational corporation retained.
“We offer customers transparency and control over their Alexa experience.
“Customers can easily review and delete their voice recordings, or choose not to save them at any time, at any time.
“Customers can import contacts from their mobile phone into the Alexa app so they can use features such as hands-free calling and messaging – this optional feature, which customers must set up, can be turned off at any time.
“Finally, you can grant permissions for the Alexa app to use certain data, such as the geolocation of your mobile device, to provide relevant results (e.g., weather, traffic, restaurant recommendations) and you can manage those permissions in the app.” .
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