Amazon’s Alexa May Soon Be Able to Imitate Dead Family Members

Not gonna lie…this one is giving me the heebie-jeebies!

Amazon is developing a new feature for Alexa that would allow you to “speak to” the dead. Kind of. Or…have the dead speak to you? Kind of.

It’s simple, Alexa will only need to listen to audio of the deceased talking for one minute . . . like from a voicemail or something . . . and it’d be able to recreate their voice. And they’d be able to say anything, not just “Why didn’t you ever call me?”

Amazon is touting it as a way to “make memories last,” which is one of the less morbid characterizations of this feature. They also suggest that a child could ask Alexa to have grandma finish reading them the “Wizard of Oz”, and Alexa would immediately adjust its voice to imitate grandma.

Or maybe your late father can recite some dad jokes?

Some people say this reminds them of the “Be Right Back” episode of the show “Black Mirror”, where a woman orders an AI copy of her dead husband. One person joked that episode was, “supposed to be a warning, not a [product] pitch.”

Amazon has yet to announce when the feature will debut, or if it will be available to the public at all.