Amazon senior vice president Rohit Prasad announced at a conference in Las Vegas that the company plans to roll out a new Alexa feature enabling the voice assistant to imitate a dead loved one’s voice using only one minute of prerecorded audio. The reason for this latest excursion deep into the uncanny valley? To "make the memories last" since "so many of us have lost someone we love" during the pandemic, said Prasad.
According to Reuters, the reveal was accompanied by a sizzle reel of a child asking Alexa, “Can grandma finish reading me the Wizard of Oz?" at which point the AI assistant confirms their request before switching over to Nana reading L. Frank Baum from beyond the grave. Although Amazon did not provide a timeline for the feature’s development and rollout, I’d like to propose the following plan to the company:
