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Propped on a to the bed table at this week’s Amazon Technology Summit, Echo Dot was asked to complete a task: “Alexa, can Grandma read me” The The Wizard of Oz’?”
Alexa’s typically cheerful voice boomed from the panda’s intelligent children’s speaker: “Okay!” Then, as the device began to tell a scene of the Cowardly Lion praying for courage, Alexa’s robotic sound was replaced by a more human narrator. .
“Instead of Alexa’s voice reading the book, it’s the voice of the child’s grandmother,” said Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and chief scientist of Alexa’s artificial intelligence, excitedly during a keynote speech in Las Vegas on Wednesday. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
The demo was the first look at Alexa’s latest feature, which, while still under development, will allow the voice assistant to replicate people’s voices from short audio clips. The goal, Prasad said, is to build greater trust with consumers by infusing artificial intelligence with “human attributes of empathy and affect.”
The new feature can “do [loved ones’] the memories last, ”Prasad said. But while the prospect of hearing the voice of a dead relative can irritate hearts, it also raises countless concerns about security and ethics, experts said.
“I don’t think our world is ready for user-friendly voice cloning technology,” Rachel Tobacco, chief executive of the San Francisco-based SocialProof Security, told The Washington Post. Such technology, she added, could be used to manipulate the public through fake audio or video clips.
“If a cybercriminal can easily and reliably replicate the voice of another person with a small voice sample, he can use that voice sample to impersonate others,” added Tobacco, a cybersecurity expert. “This bad actor can then trick others into believing they are who they say they are, which can lead to fraud, data loss, account takeover, and more.”
Then there is a risk of blurring the line between what is human and what is mechanical, said Tama Liver, a professor of Internet research at Curtin University in Australia.
“You won’t remember talking to the depths of Amazon … and its data collection services if you talk to your grandmother or your grandfather’s voice or that of a lost loved one.
“In a way, it’s like an episode of Black Mirror,” Liver said, referring to the sci-fi series predicting a future with technology.
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Alexa’s new feature also raises questions about consent, Laver added – especially for people who never imagined that their voice would be transmitted by a robotic personal assistant after they died.
“There is a real slippery slope to using deceased data in a way that is both appalling on the one hand, but deeply unethical on the other, because they never thought these traces were being used that way,” Liver said.
After recently losing his grandfather, Liver said he was sympathetic to the “temptation” to want to hear the voice of a loved one. But this opportunity opens the door to consequences that society may not be ready to take, he said – for example, who has the rights to the small excerpts that people leave on the world wide web?
“If my grandfather had sent me 100 messages, should I have the right to submit this to the system?” And if I do, who owns it? So Amazon owns this record? “He asked.” Did I give up my grandfather’s voting rights? “
Prasad did not consider such details during Wednesday’s address. However, he said that the ability to imitate voices is a product of “undoubtedly life in the golden age of AI, where our dreams and science fiction are becoming a reality.”
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If the Amazon demonstration becomes a real feature, Liver said people may need to start thinking about how their voices and likenesses can be used when they die.
“Do I have to think about this in my will that I have to say: ‘My voice and my picture story on social media are the property of my children and they can decide whether they want to revive this in a chat with me or not?’ Laver wondered.
“It’s a strange thing to say now. But this is probably a question we need to have an answer to before Alexa starts talking like me tomorrow, “he added.
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