It’s something strange going on with Amazon’s home assistant “Alexa“. At Amazon’s re:MARS event for machine learning, automation, robotics, and space (MARS), it was revealed that Alexa will be capable to speak in the voices of the dead in the future. This is a pretty terrifying piece of technology.
Amazon will use recorded clips to create a deepfake of the (deceased) voice; which would be used for Alexas voice commands/responses. This is kind of insane, right? I do think that this is one of the only ways deepfake’s could be used for good(?), although, it’s creepy to even be able to do this. There’s already a Black Mirror episode that is very similar to what’s going on here.
Artificial Intelligence seems to be moving at a very fast pace. The Alexa only needs to receive a clip less than a minute long of audio recording to make mimic the full voice. That’s scary. I like the idea, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to deploy. All sorts of privacy issues could arise. The unveiling of a lot of strange tech will surface, and we will be the ones to break the news to you every time.
