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Opinion

CREEPY:  Amazon Alexa Can Now Speak in the Voice of Deceased Loved Ones 

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For many of us, the idea of allowing a data collection company like Google or Amazon to install a microphone in our home was a silly idea.  These are corporations who’ve repeatedly and publicly demonstrated that they cannot be trusted, yet here we are allowing them to record us complaining about our laundry detergent or singing our kids a lullaby.

It’s creepy, certainly, but it’s not as creepy as it could be.

That’s where a potential new update to Amazon’s Alexa comes in.

AMAZON Alexa might one day be able to speak to you in the voice of deceased friends, family or loved ones.

The creepy feature is currently being tested by Amazon, reports say.

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That’s according to Sky News, who detailed the feature during its re:MARS conference in LAs Vegas on Wednesday, touted as a way to “make memories last”.

The goal, said Amazon’s senior vice president, Rohit Prasad, is to ‘make the memories last’ after ‘so many of us have lost someone we love’ during the pandemic.

What Amazon believed was a heartwarming example of its potential read more like a dystopian digital horror story prompt:

The US retail giant then showed off a video segment portraying a child who asks Alexa if ‘grandma can finish reading me the Wizard of Oz?’ before the AI assistant affirms the command and changes her voice.

The idea is that – after listening to someone’s voice for less than a minute – Alexa would be able to simulate that voice when speaking.

Twitter users didn’t seem to be on board with the idea either, with many comparing the potential update to something out of the sci-fi television show Black Mirror.

 

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About the Author:
As a lifelong advocate for the dream promised us in the Constitution, Andrew West has spent his years authoring lush prose editorial dirges regarding America's fall from grace and her path back to prosperity. When West isn't railing against the offensive whims of the mainstream media or the ideological cruelty that is so rampant in the US, he spends his time seeking adventurous new food and fermented beverages, with the occasional round of golf peppered in.




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