(CNN Business) – The latest iteration of Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant may sound eerily familiar.
The company announced on Wednesday during its annual re: MARS conference, which focuses on innovation in artificial intelligence, that it is working on updating its Alexa system, which will allow the technology to mimic every voice, even a deceased family member. .
In a video shown on stage, Amazon (AMZN) demonstrates how instead of Alexa’s voice reading a young boy’s story, it’s his grandmother’s voice.
Rohit Prasad, senior vice president of Amazon, said the updated system would be able to collect enough voice data in less than a minute of audio to make such customization possible, instead of forcing someone to spend hours in a recording studio, as is the case in the past. Prasad did not specify when this feature could start. Amazon declined to comment on the timeline.
The concept stems from Amazon looking for new ways to add more “human attributes” to artificial intelligence, especially “in these times of ongoing pandemic, when so many of us have lost someone we love,” Prasad said. “While AI can’t remove that pain from loss, it can definitely make their memories last.”
Amazon has long used recognizable voices, such as the real voices of Samuel L. Jackson, Melissa McCarthy and Shaquille O’Neill, to voice Alexa. But the reproduction of AI on people’s voices has also improved over the last few years, especially with the use of AI and deep-falsification technology. For example, three lines in Anthony Bourdain’s documentary “Roadrunner” were generated by AI, although it sounded as if they had been told by the late media personality. (This particular case caused excitement because it was not clear in the film that the dialogue was generated by artificial intelligence and was not endorsed by Bourdain’s legacy). “We can do a documentary ethics panel for that later,” director Morgan Neville told The New Yorker when the film debuted last year.
Most recently, actor Val Kilmer, who lost his voice to throat cancer, partnered with startup Sonantic to create a talking voice driven by artificial intelligence for him in the new movie “Top Gun: Maverick.” The company uses Kilmer’s archival audio recordings to learn an algorithm for speaking as an actor, according to Variety.
Adam Wright, a senior analyst at IDC Research, said he saw value in Amazon’s efforts.
“I think Amazon is interested in that because they have the capabilities and the technology, and they’re always looking for ways to enhance the smart assistant and the smart home,” Wright said. “Whether this leads to a deeper connection with Alexa, or just becomes a skill that some people practice from time to time, remains to be seen.” Amazon’s foray into Alexa’s personalized voices can fight most of all with the incredible effect of the valley – recreating a voice that is so similar to a loved one, but not quite right, leading to rejection by real people.
“There are certainly some risks, such as the voice and the resulting interactions with artificial intelligence, that do not match well with the memories of loved ones about this person,” said Michael Inoye of ABI Research. “For some they will look at it as scary or downright horrible, but for others it can be seen in more depth, such as the given example, allowing the child to hear the voice of his grandparents, perhaps for the first time and in somehow it’s not a strict record of the past. “
However, he believes that different reactions to messages such as this speak to how society will have to adapt to the promise of innovation and its eventual reality in the coming years.
“We will definitely see more of these kinds of experiments and trials – and at least until we reach a higher level of comfort or these things become more widespread, there will still be a wide range of answers,” he said.
Add Comment