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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.

4 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. Belgium by OzPeter · · Score: 1, Funny

    Will Alexa bleep out "Belgium"??

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

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

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

  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.

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    You are welcome on my lawn.