Amazon Alexa Care Hub Update Will Make It Easier to Help Aging Family Members
- At Amazon's Re:Mars conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, the company demonstrated a feature that enables its Alexa voice assistant to emulate any voice.
- The feature, which is still in development, could be used to replicate a family member's voice, even after they've died.
Amazon is devising a way for users to speak to their family members through its Alexa voice assistant, even after they've died.
At Amazon's Re:Mars conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist for the Alexa team, detailed a feature that allows the voice assistant to replicate a specific human voice.
In a demonstration video, a child said, "Alexa, can Grandma finish reading me the Wizard of Oz?"
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Alexa confirmed the request with the default, robotic voice, then immediately switched to a softer, more humanlike tone, seemingly mimicking the child's family member.
The Alexa team developed a model that allows its voice assistant to produce a high-quality voice with "less than a minute of recorded audio," Prasad said.
The feature is currently in development, Prasad said. Amazon did not say when the feature will roll out to the public.
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While it could ostensibly be used to replicate any voice, Prasad suggested it could be used to help memorialize a deceased family member.
Making artificial intelligence conversational and companion-like has become a key focus, especially given that "so many of us have lost someone we love" during the Covid-19 pandemic, Prasad said.
"While AI can't eliminate that pain of loss, it can definitely make the memories last," he added.
The e-commerce giant wants to make conversing with Alexa more natural in general, and has rolled out a series of features that enable its voice assistant to replicate more human-like dialogue, even to the point of asking a user questions.
