Alexa’s Ability to Replicate Anyone’s Speech Under Amazon’s Plan Raises Concerns Regarding Scams

For its voice assistant Alexa, Amazon is developing new technology that will enable it to impersonate any human’s voice, living or dead, with the help of less than a minute of recorded audio.

Amazon.com wants to give users the option to make the voice assistant Alexa sound exactly like their grandmother or anyone else. Alexa will hopefully become more commonplace in consumers’ lives thanks to Amazon’s project. But the general public’s focus has already moved on.

A developer at Alphabet Inc. ‘s (GOOGL.O) Google claimed that a business chat bot had developed sentience, which was hotly disputed. According to numbers the company has disclosed for device sales since January 2019, another Amazon official claimed on Tuesday that Alexa had 100 million users worldwide.

Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist at Amazon, showed the function with a video of a kid asking for an Amazon device at the company’s Re:Mars conference on Wednesday in Las Vegas. “Alexa, can Grandma finish reading me the Wizard of Oz?”

Amazon (AMZN) showcased on stage how a little boy’s grandmother’s voice may be substituted for Alexa’s characteristic voice when the virtual assistant is reading a narrative to the youngster. The video was shown on stage. Rohit Prasad stated that the updated system will be able to collect enough voice data from less than a minute of audio to make personalization like this possible.

In the past, the process required a person to spend hours in a recording studio. However, the updated system will be able to collect enough voice data from less than a minute of audio. Prasad did not provide any additional information regarding the possible release date of this feature. Amazon declined to comment on a timeline.

According to Prasad, the idea originated from Amazon’s exploration of novel approaches to incorporating additional human characteristics into artificial intelligence. This is particularly pertinent in light of the ongoing pandemic, during which so many of us have had to say goodbye to someone we cared deeply about.

Although artificial intelligence cannot take away the anguish of loss, it can ensure that people’s memories live on. During the demonstration, Prasad mentioned that the feature might be used to honor a deceased family member. “So many of us have lost someone we love,” he said, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a result, the company has made artificial companion-like communication a major area of attention. According to Prasad, Amazon wants Alexa to have “generalizable intelligence,” or the capacity to adjust to user situations and pick up new ideas without much outside assistance.

The all-knowing, all-capable, uber artificial general intelligence, or AGI, that Alphabet’s DeepMind unit and Elon Musk-co founded OpenAI are pursuing, he claimed, “is not to be mistaken with” this objective. While artificial intelligence (AI) cannot take away the agony of loss, it can make memories linger longer, according to Prasad.

Nevertheless, despite the presentation’s upbeat emotional tone, several in the technological community quickly criticized the new Alexa features. They regarded vocal mimicking as the ideal instrument for deepfakes, criminal schemes, and other evil purposes rather than just as a way to establish an emotional connection.