From Now On, Don't Disappoint Alexa Because She Will Sound Really Upset

Amazon could be adding more emotions to its voice assistant Alexa based on what kind of conversation you are having with it. The company announced that it has added disappointed and excited intonations to Alexa's skills for developers to use. This means the digital assistant could sound far more naturally emotive.

For a while now, the tech giant has been working to make Alexa’s intonation more natural as well giving the assistant more sensitivity to the emotions of users. Over the last two years, the assistant has got a newscaster speaking along with whispering speaking style in its vocal repertoire and Amazon seems to continue its work to specialize its voice.

Developers can not only use the Australian version of the assistant’s newscaster voice, but they can also use a new speaking style specific for music.

You can listen to the new disappointed and excited intonations of Alexa in the following videos.

From these samples, it’s safe to say that the new speaking tones are quite good. For now, though, they appear the most useful for developers who are working to give the voice assistant different tones based on specific contexts, for example when the user answers a quiz incorrectly or when they win.

While it remains unclear if Alexa voice assistant will apply these intonations smoothly and naturally when it senses different emotional states from the use, it looks like we will see that capability in the near future.