Amazon just announced some big changes coming to Alexa this year: a new, more natural sounding voice, support for simultaneous, bi-lingual requests, and celebrity guest voices — starting with none other than Samuel L. Jackson.
The new voice is based on neural text-to-speech software that relies on deep learning techniques to make Alexa sound more like a real human being (the same approach that Apple took with Siri’s new voice earlier this year on iOS 13.)
That neural text-to-speech mode also allows Amazon to mimic real human voices, too, like celebrities, which Amazon will be offering as alternative Alexa voices this year, starting with Samuel L. Jackson. And thanks to the new tech, unlike other celebrity voice software, the Alexa…