On Thursday, Alexa gained a new skill in the US that will make the voice assistant sound more natural when reading longform content like podcasts, blog posts, and news articles.
For people and businesses looking for an automated reading voice that can read aloud articles, blog posts, and other longform content to their customers, Amazon has announced a new speaking style for its Alexa voice assistant aptly named “Long-Form Speaking Style”.
This style, which is only available in the US, gives Alexa a more natural tone to create a more engaging experience for users over relatively long periods of time. An example the company gives is using "this speaking style for customers who want to have the content on a web page read to them or listen to a storytelling section in a game”; Alexa is also said to be able to intelligently place pauses when speaking whether it's to differentiate paragraphs or the dialogue of different characters.
In addition to this new tool, existing styles like news and conversational speaking styles are expanding to more Amazon Polly voices — Amazon Polly is the service developers can use to convert text to speech which allows them to make speech-enabled products. Ten new Polly voices are also being made available to developers to create speech-enabled products and services for their customers.
These styles are available now, giving developers the opportunity to create unique audio experiences. — AFP Relaxnews
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