It has already happened several times, but it continues to surprise us: reality surpasses fiction. The worrying thing comes when it overcomes a dystopian and dark fiction like that of “Black Mirror”. The Netflix series, created by Charlie Brooker, has been characterized by suggesting somewhat disturbing futures due to the excessive development of technology (or its misuse), so alarm bells ring when such a situation becomes reality.
Alexa, the virtual assistant developed by Amazon, will allow us still hear the voice of our dead relatives. This macabre event will be one of the features that the update that the company’s engineers are working on will incorporate, as reported by Rohit Prasad, Amazon’s vice president responsible for this artificial intelligence, at the conference held in Las Vegas. The operation is simple: with just one minute of audio or video, Alexa will be able to recognize your voice and recreate it from there.
Soon after, fans spotted this distinctive use of an AI and associated it with the main storyline of the first chapter of the second season of ‘Black Mirror’. Entitled ‘I’ll be right back’, 2×01 shows us how the protagonist (played by Hayley Atwell) can’t get over the death of her boyfriend (Domhnall Gleeson), who died in a car accident. To keep her boyfriend close, she decides to hire an online service that can create virtually real virtual avatars based on accessing her boyfriend’s story, fingerprints, messages and other information. The more data the company receives, the more reliable and recognizable this virtual boyfriend becomes, for which they end up creating an android whose voice is exactly the same.
Although the series itself already clarifies why this is not a good idea, as it interrupts the stages of a natural mourning for the death of a person, loyal fans of the series have taken the time to remember it through social networks. Among other messages and jokes, they emphasize it “Black Mirror did a whole episode about why this was a terrible idea” or that the series “it is meant to be a warning, not a model to follow”.
Black Mirror should be a warning, not a step. https://t.co/uycSFhaKAy
? Noam Blum (@neontaster) June 22, 2022
Black Mirror literally did a whole episode on why this is a terrible idea. https://t.co/9QENWkgL8g
? Studio8502 (@ Studio8502) June 23, 2022
Is it that Black Mirror hasn’t taught us anything? https://t.co/bbF7mgpkpR
? Mia (@MiaCensurada) June 23, 2022
A few years ago Black Mirror was simply a dystopian series. Gradually it became day and day, and I don’t like that. https://t.co/dVLo8VVcN6
? David (@ daviddlp98) June 23, 2022
A technological development … unethical?
Since its inception, science fiction has warned us of the danger that an unethical use of technology can entail. However, the paradox of the matter lies in the use of these artificial intelligences in today’s narrative itself. From the famous Deepfake, where you can insert one person’s face into another’s body and it’s really a hit, to digital rejuvenation as in the case of Samuel L. Jackson in ‘Captain Marvel’ or Robert De Niro in ‘The Irishman’, for give a couple of examples. What is clear is that identity is spreading more and more in this liquid reality of virtuality and digitization. And it doesn’t look like it will stop, because more recently we’ve seen how Reespecher, a text-to-speech application, recreated Mark Hamill’s voice when he was young for the return of Luke Skywalker in “The Book of Boba Fett”. ‘or like Sonantic, another similar instrument did the same with Val Kilmer in’ Top Gun: Maverick ‘because the actor’s throat cancer left him almost voiceless.
Source: E Cartelera
