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Amazon\u2019s Alexa is going to sound more human. The company announced<\/a> this week the addition of a new set of speaking skills for the virtual assistant, which will allow her to do things like whisper, take a breath to pause for emphasis, adjust the rate, pitch and volume of her speech, and more. She\u2019ll even be able to \u201cbleep\u201d out words \u2013 which may not be all that human, actually, but is certainly clever.<\/p>\n These new tools were provided to Alexa app developers in the form of a standardized markup language called\u00a0Speech Synthesis Markup Language, or SSML<\/a>, which will let them code Alexa\u2019s speech patterns into their applications. This will allow for the creation of voice apps \u2013 \u201cSkills\u201d on the Alexa platform \u2013 where developers\u00a0can control the pronunciation, intonation, timing and emotion of their Skill\u2019s text responses.<\/p>\n Alexa today already has a lot of personality \u2013 something that can help endear people to their voice assistants. Having taken a note from how Apple\u2019s Siri surprises people with her humorous responses, Alexa responds to questions about herself, tells jokes, answers to \u201cI love you,\u201d and will even sing you a song<\/a> if you ask. But her voice can still sound robotic at times \u2013 especially if she\u2019s reading out longer phrases and sentences where there should be natural breaks and changes in tone.<\/p>\n As Amazon explains, developers\u00a0could have used\u00a0these new tools to make Alexa talk like E.T., but that\u2019s not really the point. To ensure developers make use of the tools as intended \u2013 to humanize Alexa\u2019s speaking patterns \u2013\u00a0Amazon has set limits on the amount of change developers are able to apply to the rate, pitch, and volume. (There will be no high-pitched, squeaks and screams, I guess.)<\/p>\n In total, there are five new SSML tags that can be put into practice, including whispers, expletive beeps, emphasis, sub (which lets Alexa say something other than what\u2019s written), and prosody. That last one is about\u00a0controlling the volume, pitch and rate of speech.<\/p>\n To show how these changes could work in a real Alexa app, Amazon created a quiz game template<\/a> that uses the new tags, but can also be modified by developers to test out Alexa\u2019s new voice tricks.<\/p>\n In addition to the tags, Amazon also\u00a0introduced<\/a> \u201cspeechcons\u201d to developers in the U.K. and Germany. These are special words and phrases that Alexa knows to express in a more colorful way to make her interactions engaging and personal. Some speechcons were already available in the U.S., for a number of words, like \u201cabracadabra!,\u201d \u201cahem,\u201d \u201caloha,\u201d \u201ceureka!,\u201d \u201cgotcha,\u201d \u201ckapow,\u201d \u201cyay,\u201d\u00a0and many more.<\/a><\/p>\n But with their arrival in the new markets, Alexa Skill developers can\u00a0use regionally specific terms such as \u201cBlimey\u201d and \u201cBob\u2019s your uncle,\u201d in the U.K. and \u201cDa lachen ja die H\u00fchner\u201d and \u201cDonnerwetter\u201d in Germany.<\/p>\n There are now over 12,000 Alexa Skills on the marketplace but it\u2019s unknown how many developers will actually put the new voice tags to work.<\/p>\n After all, this humanization of Alexa relies on having an active developer community. And that\u2019s something that requires Amazon to do more than build out clever tricks to be put to use \u2013 it has to be able to support an app economy, where developers don\u2019t just build things for fun, but because there are real businesses that can be run atop Amazon\u2019s voice computing infrastructure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/06\/amazon-echo-new.png?w=680&h=453\")
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Amazon’s Alexa is going to sound more human. The company announced this week the addition of a new set of speaking skills for the virtual assistant, which will allow her to do things like whisper, take a breath to pause for emphasis, adjust the rate, pitch and volume of her speech, and more. She’ll even be able to “bleep” out words – which may not be all that… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/img><\/a>
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