Amazon has just demonstrated that its intelligent assistant Alexa is now able to reproduce almost identically or almost any human voice, including that of a deceased person. The range of possibilities seems to be endless.
At its Re:MARS conference in Las Vegas, Amazon caused a stir with this brand new feature that recreates the voice of a missing person. In the demonstration, a child hears himself told the story of the Wizard of Oz by his deceased grandmother. Following this request, the synthetic voice of Alexa therefore gave way to that, more human, of a person known to the listener.
According to those responsible for the research program that led to this feat, less than a minute of audio recorded by any individual is enough today to reproduce an approaching voice, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence.
At the moment, the functionality is still in the development stage and absolutely nothing indicates that it will soon be available to everyone. Nevertheless, it opens up some pretty crazy possibilities, like being able to chat and ask questions of dead loved ones.
The basic idea is in fact to be able to reproduce the voice of anyone, from simple sound recordings. In absolute terms, it is first and foremost the members of the same family who are thus targeted, but such a process could also be diverted. Behind the idea of ”commemorating” the memory of a deceased loved one, this technology therefore raises many ethical questions, not to mention the shock of (re)hearing the voice of a deceased loved one. It’s cold in the back…