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Amazon's Alexa Can Now Whisper, Bleep Out Swear Words, and Change Its Pitch (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the steady-as-we-go dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Amazon is trying to make its Alexa voice assistant sound more humanlike. Up until now, the female-sounding voice maintained an even, monotone cadence whenever speaking, but with Amazon's new Speech Synthesis Markup Language that the company introduced this week, Alexa can whisper, vary its speaking speed, and bleep out words. Developers can also add pauses, change the pronunciation of a word, spell a word out, add audio snippets, and insert special words and phrases into their skill. The Verge notes that "the language markups are [only] available to developers in the U.S., U.K. and Germany." Amazon will also be hosting a webinar on May 18th on the new code.

36 comments

  1. Bleep this by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Amazon's Alexa can suck my dick. If I want to buy something, I'll spend 15 seconds to look it up and click a button.

    I don't even like talking to my family all that much. I'm not going to talk to some evil fucking djinn of a multinational corporation.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
    1. Re:Bleep this by CaseCrash · · Score: 2

      Why is there all this hate against the Echo? I got one about 2 months ago an I quite like it. "Alexa play NPR" "Alexa play rain sounds" "Alexa play empty by metric"

      What I've had a lot of fun with is I got some of those Hue wifi lightbulbs and I tell her to turn them on or off or 60% or whatever. The pull chain for the light in the living room was broken and I like to keep the fan on so I grabbed those and an Echo and it actually is more convenient than a switch. (Wasteful yes, but fun)

      --
      No, that link you posted to a web comic we've all seen a hundred times is not "obligatory."
    2. Re:Bleep this by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      Is someone forcing you to buy one? Blink twice if we should call the cops.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    3. Re:Bleep this by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Alexa play NPR" "Alexa play rain sounds" "Alexa play empty by metric"

      Look at what Alexa's done to you already. NPR, rain sounds and metric.

      Seek help immediately, or you'll soon be ordering salt lamps and a Juicero.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    4. Re:Bleep this by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      Is someone forcing you to buy one? Blink twice if we should call the cops.

      I'm afraid to blink twice, because Alexa might be watching me from the camera on my laptop and she'll interpret my two blinks as a sign that I want to order a gross of USB-C cables and 8 pairs of Dockers.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    5. Re: Bleep this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I both love and despise you. So conflicted.

    6. Re:Bleep this by CaseCrash · · Score: 2

      Yeah I was lost already, but come on:

      NPR's better than FOX or CNN,
      Rain sounds are nice when you're napping on the couch,
      And I like Emily Haines, Canadian indie-alt rules

      --
      No, that link you posted to a web comic we've all seen a hundred times is not "obligatory."
    7. Re:Bleep this by CaseCrash · · Score: 2

      OMG, thank you for letting me know about all the amazing health benefits of salt lamps, I had no idea! Hygroscopy? Reduction of EMR? Reduces coughing and asthma? Awesome!

      And duh, juicing is super beneficial because liquid forms of fruits and vegetables are obviously better than solid, because science.

      (And FYI I also ask Alexa for Dragon Force and They Might Be Giants and Fallout Boy and Explosions in the Sky and Alice in Chains and all kinds of other garbage, so...)

      (Fucking salt lamps, really? I knew people were stupid, but come on)

      --
      No, that link you posted to a web comic we've all seen a hundred times is not "obligatory."
    8. Re: Bleep this by CaseCrash · · Score: 0

      It's Pope Ratzo! Yeah!

      --
      No, that link you posted to a web comic we've all seen a hundred times is not "obligatory."
    9. Re:Bleep this by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Rain sounds are nice when you're napping on the couch,

      How can you sleep in peaceful repose, knowing that Alexa is listening to your every sub-vocal muttering? You might fart and the next thing you know, Amazon has shipped you a case of tube socks.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    10. Re:Bleep this by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      (Fucking salt lamps, really? I knew people were stupid, but come on)

      One of my neighbors got a salt lamp for Christmas and put it on the curb for garbage pickup by New Year's Eve. I saw it when I was walking the dog and snatched it up. I was hoping to wrap it again and re-gift it to someone as a gag, but my wife saw it and plugged it in. Now it sits as a night light on the counter in the hallway going to the bathroom. True story.

      I don't know about any health benefits, but it is strangely attractive. A light bulb inside a lump of salt. Who would've thunk it?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    11. Re:Bleep this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Amazon's Alexa can suck my dick.

      Sold!

    12. Re:Bleep this by KingBenny · · Score: 1

      LOL ... well i'd say bleeping out swearwords is most important if you need the illusion of a pseudo A.I. belonging to a conservative subculture, after all whats more important than goodspeak and restricted use of dangerous killer-words gone viral ?
      first thing i hear about this alexa thing ... serves amazon well for not letting me pay with bitcoin or debet ... or okpay .. or about anything i can pay with ... and i'm still living under a rock cos the fallout from the nazi zombies is way too contagious , which reminds me , i'm running out of tin foil ... DAM , gonna have to make a supply run, where's mah junk jet.
      Alexa hm ? and it can change pitch too ? woaw, i think he should stick to his space program and give musk a run for it instead

      --
      Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
  2. Belgium by OzPeter · · Score: 1, Funny

    Will Alexa bleep out "Belgium"??

    --
    I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
    1. Re:Belgium by Baron_Yam · · Score: 1, Funny

      And you wonder why nobody ever visits. It's people like you.

      Holy Zarquon's singing fish, mankind.

    2. Re: Belgium by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >>Holy Zarquon's singing fish?

  3. Hey Alexa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Suck my d***.

    1. Re:Hey Alexa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "I'm sorry, I can't find that"

  4. Can they make it talk like a pirate? by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    LOL if they can.. but I still won't have one, regardless.

  5. Okay, but.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    That's well and good, but what I'd really like to see Alexa be able to do is to be removed from the Kindle Fire that I bought two years ago without Alexa and which downloaded itself without my consent. Now that is a feature I'd like to see.

    1. Re:Okay, but.. by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Too bad. You paid to lease the Fire. They own it and can put anything on it they want (or take anything off of it). You knew the deal.

  6. add instead of filter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can it be programmed to add in extra swearing?

    And speak in a Rick Sanchez voice?

    And add in burps?

    1. Re:add instead of filter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lick lick lick my balls!

  7. Only available by 110010001000 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "the language markups are [only] available to developers in the U.S., U.K. and Germany."

    Welcome to the walled garden.

    1. Re:Only available by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      Clearly, they should have withheld all markup until they were finished with the translation to Tocharian.

  8. Amazon sales by s.petry · · Score: 3, Funny

    Would you be interested in our "Tourette syndrome model"?

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    1. Re:Amazon sales by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would you be interested in our "Tourette syndrome model"?

      Maybe Alexa can tell me why thepiratebay.org is down (502 "Bad Gateway") so often lately. Really not impressed with "Cloudflare's Always Online technology".

      Sure there's other torrent sites but I like the old classic. Seriously is there some kind of DDoS campaign against them lately? Maybe from a state actor? Because almost daily this last week or so, I've been getting these 502 errors just to have it start working again in a couple hours.

    2. Re:Amazon sales by CaseCrash · · Score: 2

      It's been happening for weeks. Usually I just wait 2 minutes and try again an it's back up. For at least a query or two. I assumed they've been under DDoS but I haven't seen any news on it.

      --
      No, that link you posted to a web comic we've all seen a hundred times is not "obligatory."
  9. How did they make it whisper? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wonder how did they implement whisper. Alexa uses IVONA technology (they acquired the company), which is based on unit selection, after all (pre-recorded corpus of speech). It doesn't model voices parametrically.
    For pitch I suppose you can use different versions of units as well as all the reasonably well working techniques of pitch shifting that preserve formants.

  10. eventually there will be a bitch mode by turkeydance · · Score: 0

    just make men feel at home

  11. Even, monotone cadence whenever speaking by PPH · · Score: 1

    That's when they are the most dangerous.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
    1. Re:Even, monotone cadence whenever speaking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm sorry Dave, but I can't let you do that.

  12. That's not what monotone means by kriston · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's not what monotone means. Alexa is anything *but* monotone and the author would know this if they ever actually used the service. The voice is moderatly "sing-song" cadence like a radio news reader.

    --

    Kriston

  13. Norton Setup by HarryParker9340 · · Score: 0

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  14. SSML by ebcdic · · Score: 1

    It's not "Amazon's new Speech Synthesis Markup Language". SSML is an existing standard; Amazon have added a few proprietary extensions.

  15. Star Trek by WallyL · · Score: 1

    Computed and recorded, dear. /pouts