Amazon’s Alexa could soon mimic the voice of your dead loved ones
Your Amazon Alexa may soon be able to replicate real, human voices — even those of your deceased loved ones.
The company announced the new feature at it annual Re:Mars conference, which is focuses on innovation in artificial intelligence (AI).
The update to Alexa’s system would allow the virtual assistant to mimic the voice of any person based on less than a minute of recording.
To demonstrate, Amazon played a video at Wednesday’s event when a young boy asked “Alexa, can Grandma finish reading me the Wizard of Oz?”
Alexa then acknowledged the request, and switched to another voice mimicking the child’s grandmother. The voice assistant continued to read the book in that same voice.
Amazon began working on this feature as a way to put more “human attributes of empathy and affect,” into the Alexa system to build more trust in its users
These attributes have become even more important during the ongoing pandemic when so many of us have lost ones that we love,
These attributes have become even more important during the ongoing pandemic when so many of us have lost ones that we love,
This feature differs from other generated voices the company has developed in the past because it had to be capable to creating a “high-quality voice” without hours of studio recording.
More recently, the film Top Gun: Maverick included AI-generated speech mimicking the voice of Val Kilmer, who lost his voice to throat cancer.
More recently, the film Top Gun: Maverick included AI-generated speech mimicking the voice of Val Kilmer, who lost his voice to throat cancer.