At the Amazon Tech Summit, the tech giant teased a tech that could be cool or creepy, or even contentious. An Echo Dot was asked to do a task in the voice of a dead relative of the user and the thing responded in that voice. Now, although, Amazon vaunts endearing use cases like how you could get the sense of talking to a deceased loved one, the question is whether bad actors would also share the right intentions. Also, could we get Alexa to speak in the voice of our favorite celebrities?

Rohit Prasad, senior vice president, and head scientist, Alexa artificial intelligence said the tech uses AI to synthesize voices based on the data from short audio clips fed to the machine learning system. The result aims to have “human attributes of empathy and affect.”

The biggest value proposition is that the new Alexa voice can “make [loved ones’] memories last”.

But not everybody buys this Amazon claim. 

Rachel Tobac, chief executive of San Francisco-based SocialProof Security doesn’t think the “user-friendly voice-cloning technology” is ready. Speaking to Washington Post, she adds, “If a cybercriminal can easily and credibly replicate another person’s voice with a small voice sample, they can use that voice sample to impersonate other individuals. That bad actor can then trick others into believing they are the person they are impersonating, which can lead to fraud, data loss, account takeover, and more”.

Not to forget the ethical concerns of whether the deceased person’s approval is required to use the tech like this. So, lot’s of things to consider before the tech would become a reality someday. 

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About Me: Vasan is a word weaver and tech junkie who is currently geeking out as a news writer at Digit. Read More

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