Amazon has just unveiled a new feature for its voice assistant Alexa: the ability to imitate voices, including those of deceased people.
It was Rohit Prasad, first vice-president of Alexa, who made the announcement at the American giant's Re: Mars conference on Wednesday, reports the specialized media Phonandroid.
“We are living in the golden age of AI”
Amazon's stated goal is to "make memories last".
To do this, Alexa will be able to imitate any voice after just less than a minute of listening.
Until now, to achieve such a feat, you had to spend several hours in the studio to record the voice.
“The way we achieved this is to frame the problem as a speech conversion task and not as a speech generation pathway.
We are living, without doubt, the golden age of AI”, explained the first vice-president of Alexa.
Deceased people but also relatives or celebrities
During the presentation of this feature, Amazon demonstrated with a child who listened to a story told by his deceased grandmother.
“So many of us have lost someone we love (during the Covid-19 pandemic).
While AI can't take away that pain of loss, it can definitely make memories last,” Rohit Prasad said, according to CNBC.
But the American giant clarified that it would also be possible to ask the voice assistant to imitate the voice of relatives or personalities.
These voices can be used to read stories, turn on lights or even play music from an Alexa device.
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