Amazon Alexa to soon read stories in even dead people’s voice, netizens find it creepy

New Delhi: A new Amazon Alexa function will enable the virtual assistant to imitate the voice of a member of your family. Alexa will be read or speak your preferred bedtime stories using the new feature currently being worked upon by Amazon. According to Amazon’s Senior Vice President and Head Scientist for Alexa, Rohit Prasad, we are unquestionably living in the golden era of AI, where our dreams and science fiction are becoming a reality. Prasad said that the Alexa team only needed one minute of speech to accomplish this achievement during the company's annual 're:Mars' conference on Wednesday in Las Vegas. 

"This required inventions where we had to learn to produce a high-quality voice with less than a minute of the recording versus hours of recording in the studio," Pradas told the audience. (ALSO READ: 

"The way we made it happen is by framing the problem as a voice conversion task and not a speech generation path," he added. (ALSO READ: Couples opting for surrogacy to buy 3-yr health insurance for surrogates: Govt) 

During a presentation, a child asked, "Alexa, can grandma finish reading me the Wizard of Oz?" (ALSO READ: Sensex, Nifty rebound nearly 1% on gains in auto, IT stocks) 

Alexa replied yes and then immediately changed her voice, sounding like the kid’s grandmother in real life. The upcoming feature is currently in the works.

Amazon has announced to host its annual Alexa Live developers event on July 20. The company is expected to provide more updates about the event at the developers event next month. 

Attendees of Alexa Live 2022 will get a comprehensive look at the science underlying the next "ambient intelligence" technology.

"Our vision for ambient computing can only be realized by extensive collaboration between teams at Alexa and all of our partners," said Kelly Wenzel, Director of Business to Business and Developer Marketing at Alexa.

"Alexa Live 2022 is our opportunity to showcase the many products, programs, and services we`ve designed specifically to help brands and builders leverage Alexa`s growing footprint to innovate on behalf of customers," Wenzel added.

Customers throughout the world are already using hundreds of millions of Alexa devices. People use Alexa for a variety of things, including playing their favourite music, reading the news, dimming the lights in their living rooms, and much more.

– With IANS inputs.