Alexa to Bring Back the Voice of Your Late Loved Ones Back

Amazon to release new mimic voice features in their IoT device 

After connecting you with the smart devices, Amazon is planning to connect you back with the loved ones that left you. Soon, Alexa will be talking and taking command from you with a mimic voice of your late loved ones. Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa, on 22 June, Wednesday at Amazon’s re:MARS conference in Las Vegas, announced the same with the statement,

While AI can’t eliminate that pain of loss, it can definitely make their memories last.

At the conference, Amazon also presented a demonstration video in which a youngster asked Alexa if grandma could finish reading “The Wizard of Oz ”. Alexa responded with “ok,” and at the very next moment, it was the voice of grandma reciting the story to the subject. 

We had to learn to produce a high-quality voice with less than a minute of recording

Rohit Prasad added,

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

However, it might not be practical to expect the feature anytime soon as Amazon has not announced anything regarding the release date yet. 

Whatever might be the intention of Amazon behind the launch of the feature, however the controversies are spreading all over the social media regarding the same. Big tech companies are also studying the impact of AI on society. Microsoft has recently announced about restricting a software that can mimic the voice of a person as it can be weaponized in numerous ways. 

The announcement of Amazon has received mixed reactions from “wow” to “creepy” to “no”. Some have stated that it might not be a very good idea to bring the voice of a dead person back among the living ones. 

Researchers are engaged in the argument about the huge misuse of such features in society. Deepfakes is going to prevail around by rending the audio with AI and making it appear as if someone said a thing, while in reality, it’s far from the truth. The same feature might also act as a catalyst to spread fake news and misinformation as well. 

All we can do at the current phase is argue and debate about the positive and negative outcomes of such features in everyday life of people. Amazon might make the feature more controlled, or the arguments by the people might turn true.