Amazon’s Alexa has become a staple in many households thanks to the company’s range of Echo speakers, though the digital assistant might be set to become a little more homely thanks to a new feature update which would let the speaker respond in the voice of one’s deceased relatives.
Demoed at its annual MARS conference, the feature saw its first reveal in an example where a child asks Alexa to read a bedtime story in the voice of his deceased grandmother.
Speaking on the feature, Amazon’s head scientist for Alexa AI, Rohit Prasad, quipped that “While AI can’t eliminate that pain of loss, it can definitely make their memories last… in these times of the ongoing pandemic, when so many of us have lost someone we love.”
There’s presently no indication of whether or when Amazon would plan to make the feature public, though it has claimed that Alexa would be able to emulate a person’s voice from listening to just one minute of recorded audio.
