Until now they have been presented as assistants in our daily digital tasks, and although they can help us order online purchases, tell us the weather, read us an eBook or even tell us a joke, the truth is that their intonation is rather flat, and as much as they are getting faster and more accurate in responding, they still have a long way to go to reach the nuances of the human voice.
But… what would you think if one day Alexa answered you extremely excited? Although this could be part of the nightmares of more than one, this is already a reality. you want the interaction with the Alexa assistant to be more fluid, and now he will be able to show different emotions when responding to you.
The Alexa assistant will now put more emotion into your intonation
In an official publication of it was announced that his assistant Alexa will respond to users with a tone of voice that represents two different emotional tones: happy/excited and disappointed/empathetic. This feature is exclusively available to users in the United States, at least for now.
The Alexa assistant emotions use (NTTS) technology, which allows for a more natural sound, according to Amazon. The retail giant has allowed us to know what the intonation of its Alexa assistant will be like when it is excited or happy when you answer a trivia question correctly or win the game:
But what will happen when you lose the game? Alexa will be able to respond to you in a disappointed or more empathetic tone with your loss, and that tone can also be present when he gives you the bad news that your favorite soccer team has lost, for example.
Perhaps it may seem that, in the examples that Amazon has shared with us, Alexa doesn’t seem so much empathetic as that she is probably falling asleep. It will be a matter of seeing the context in which each of the modulations of tone of voice and emotions are appliedand of course, that its Machine Learning technology allows it to learn when it is necessary to apply this intonation, since it will be able to respond in different low, medium and high intensities for each emotion.
Alexa debuts the “news” and “music” voice style
Additionally, Amazon announced that its Alexa assistant is also debuting two additional styles: “News” and “Music”. The first, “news,” is a crisp, clean voice style with strong intonation on important words. Secondly, the standard style of “music” is slower, more relaxed, and more casual, as you can hear below:
This is not the first time that Alexa has released voice styles. Last January, Alexa introduced a newscaster voice style, in addition to having a “whisper mode” which has been available to users in the United States since last October.
Nevertheless, this is the first time that Alexa wants to show her most human side and presents the beginning of what could be his new emotions. Only time will tell if both she and we adapt to this more emotional style of communication.
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