Creepy: Amazon Alexa imitates dead grandma's voice - researchers concerned about potential for abuse
Created: 06/24/2022, 13:18
By: Stella Henrich
Amazon software imitates voices at lightning speed.
Also those of the deceased or people you like.
And divides the voice material into two parts.
Munich – The technical finesse is made possible thanks to new software.
It should be possible to imitate human voices within less than 60 seconds.
The US online company Amazon has now impressively demonstrated in a kind of journey to re:Mars how a networked loudspeaker with the language assistant Alexa reads the book "The Wizard of OZ" to a little boy with his grandmother's voice.
So far so good.
The boy likes that.
Grandma is far away.
And the idea of her sitting next to the bed in the evening and reading him the beautiful story of the magician in her unmistakable voice is somehow wonderful.
But what if grandma passed away a long time ago?
No problem for the technology.
"Artificial intelligence can't make this pain go away," but it can help keep people's memories alive, said Rohit Prasad, Alexa research director, demonstrating the tech trick at a conference in Las Vegas.
Amazon technology: Vocal material is broken down into content and identity
One minute of vocal material was enough to synthesize grandma's voice and make it sound authentic.
Listen and be amazed - 60 seconds were enough for this experiment.
Amazon provides the explanation right away: "We have divided voice generation into two tasks: speech content and speaker identity".
Other comparable providers would require 30 times more training material for this.
But despite all the enthusiasm for technology with artificial intelligence, there are also critics like Siwei Lyu, professor of computer science at the University of Buffalo.
The researcher is concerned about the potential for abuse of the software, reports the financial service
Bloomberg
.
He keeps this in mind when malefactors pose as family members or when someone messes up stock markets with bogus statements from top executives.
You really can't imagine it.
Amazon conference in Las Vegas: tool for simulating voices
Apparently, the presentation gave the impression "that Amazon is promoting the service as a tool for digitally raising the dead," according to Bloomberg.
Alexa boss Prasad then backtracked in an interview at Amazon's re:MARS technology conference in Las Vegas, saying the service wasn't primarily designed to simulate the voices of the dead.
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According to Amazon, the technology is still in the development phase.
It is not yet certain when all Alexa devices from Amazon will have this option integrated.
Technology such as the voice assistant Alexa - used correctly - can already be of great help today - also and above all for grandmas and grandpas.
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