Amazons Alexa gets a new longform speaking style

Amazon is introducing a new speaking style for Alexa and adding some speaking styles for other AI voices, the company said today. The longform speaking style is available for US developers who want a reading voice that sounds more natural when reading long pieces of content, like articles or podcasts.

Amazon says the longform style is “powered by a deep-learning text-to-speech model,” and allows Alexa-voiced devices to speak with more natural conversational pauses. It follows last year’s release of new speaking styles for news and music content and a November update that allows Alexa to seem “disappointed” or “excited.”

Here’s the usual “neutral” Alexa speaking style.

Here’s Alexa speaking in longform style.

(I’ll be honest: the only...

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