Amazon shows off Alexa feature that mimics the voices of your dead relatives

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

The artificial intelligence assistant can mimic the voices of users' dead relatives.

The company demoed the feature at its annual MARS conference, showing a video in which a child asksAlexa to read a story in his grandma's voice

In the experience, it was the kid's grandma's voice that read the book, rather than the voice of the speaker. In these times of the ongoing Pandemic, when so many of us have lost someone we love, it's more important than ever to add human attributes to artificial intelligence.

The pain of loss can be alleviated with the help of artificial intelligence. The demo can be watched below.

According to Amazon, its systems can learn to mimic someone's voice from a single minute of recorded audio. It is within the reach of the average consumer to clone the voices of loved ones.

Although this particular application is already controversial, with users on social media calling the feature "creepy" and a "monstrosity", it has become increasingly common in recent years. Audio deepfakes are often used in industries like video games and film.

Users can clone individual voices from their recordings in many audio recording suites. A sound engineer can change what a host says by typing in a new script. Small edits can be made with a few clicks, even though it takes a lot of work.

The same technology has been used in films. A documentary about the life of chef Anthony Bourdain used artificial intelligence to read quotes from his emails. Fans were not happy with the application of the technology. The use of the technology was defended by others.

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Many people around the world are already using artificial intelligence to have lasting personal relationships with the dead. For example, people have created a bot that mimics dead loved ones. It is possible to add accurate voices to these systems using today's artificial intelligence.

It's not clear whether customers will want their dead loved ones to become puppets.