Amazon鈥檚 Alexa might soon replicate the voice of family members - even if they鈥檙e dead.

The capability, unveiled at Amazon鈥檚 Re:Mars conference in Las Vegas, is in development and would allow the virtual assistant to mimic the voice of a specific person based on a less than a minute of provided recording.

Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa, said at the event Wednesday that the desire behind the feature was to build greater trust in the interactions users have with Alexa by putting more 鈥渉uman attributes of empathy and affect.鈥�

鈥淭hese attributes have become even more important during the ongoing pandemic when so many of us have lost ones that we love,鈥� Prasad said. 鈥淲hile AI can鈥檛 eliminate that pain of loss, it can definitely make their memories last.鈥�

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In a video played by Amazon at the event, a young child asks 鈥淎lexa, can Grandma finish reading me the Wizard of Oz?鈥� Alexa then acknowledges the request, and switches to another voice mimicking the child鈥檚 grandmother. The voice assistant then continues to read the book in that same voice.

To create the feature, Prasad said the company had to learn how to make a 鈥渉igh-quality voice鈥� with a shorter recording, opposed to hours of recording in a studio. Amazon did not provide further details about the feature, which is bound to spark more privacy concerns and ethical questions about consent.

Amazon鈥檚 push comes as competitor Microsoft earlier this week said it was scaling back its synthetic voice offerings and setting stricter guidelines to 鈥渆nsure the active participation of the speaker鈥� whose voice is recreated. Microsoft said Tuesday it is limiting which customers get to use the service 鈥� while also continuing to highlight acceptable uses such as an interactive Bugs Bunny character at AT&T stores.

鈥淭his technology has exciting potential in education, accessibility, and entertainment, and yet it is also easy to imagine how it could be used to inappropriately impersonate speakers and deceive listeners,鈥� said a blog post from Natasha Crampton, who heads Microsoft鈥檚 AI ethics division.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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