Amazon demonstrated a new feature for Alexa that will identically mimic the voice of a specific person at the "Amazon re:MARS 2022" conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

The demonstration video was led by Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist for the Alexa team.

The video showed a child who asked to hear a story read by their grandmother. “Alexa can grandma finish reading me the Wizard of Oz?” the child said. Alexa replied confirming the request in her normal tone and then went on to read the story sounding exactly like the child’s grandmother.

This is being done by using “less than a minute of recorded audio” from a specific person, which is then used to create different sounds to make other words using their voice, the video explained. The feature is still under development.

“So many of us have lost someone we love,” Prasad said.

“While AI can’t eliminate that pain of loss, it can definitely make the memories last,” he added.

This type of technology has also been dubbed “deepfake voice technology."

The technology has been used in scams. In 2019, the Washington Post reported that “criminals used artificial intelligence to impersonate a chief executive’s voice and demand a fraudulent transfer of $243,000.”

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