Amazon’s Alexa has become a “Black Mirror” writing prompt

Star Trek: The Next Generation Rewatch: “Sub Rosa” | Tor.com — “Grandma, order more Keurig pods.”
(This scene is from the “Dead granda’s sexy diary” episode
of *Star Trek: The Next Generation*.)

At their MARS conference yesterday, Amazon announced that they’re experimenting with a feature that allows Alexa to mimic voices, demonstrating it with a video where a kid asks it to read them a bedtime story…using the voice of their dead grandmother.

Amazon SVP Rohit Prasad said that the feature can mimic any voice when given a less than a minute of audio samples, saying that it’s intended to “make the memories last” after “so many of us have lost someone we love,” in a reference to the pandemic as well (as another instance of the worst tech bros’ belief that death is optional.)

The “hear long-lost relatives speak again!” is a strange pitch, and it’s just as likely that Amazon’s simply responding to some demand for Alexa to feature celebrity voices. By providing this voice impersonation feature, they put the responsibility of capturing a famous person’s voice onto the user, and thus Amazon doesn’t have to pay any licensing/likeness fees.

If you watch Black Mirror, you’re probably remembering the episode Be Right Back, in which a woman recreates her dead boyfriend with readily-available technology:

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