2023-06-01 14:05:43
Amazon has decided to remove the celebrity voices that allow you to customize that of your digital assistant Alexa, which not only are they no longer available for purchase, but they will also lose support to continue using them.
Celebrity voices are a type of Alexa setting that users could purchase from the Amazon skills store to give the assistant a certain “personality”, since with them they could modify the activation command (Hey, celebrity), listen to stories or jokes and get answers with their voice.
For the creation of these voice options, Amazon used text-to-speech natural language models. In the United States they were available since 2019 and allowed to acquire that of Samuel L. Jackson, Shaquille O’Neal and Melisssa McCarthy.
Now, Amazon has confirmed that it will no longer offer these voices. In a statement sent to The Verge, spokesman Eric Sveum explains that “customers will be able to continue using these voices for a limited time”. And since this was a paid feature, contacting customer support to request a refund.
The three voices are no longer available for purchase and their support will be withdrawn in two: first Samuel L. Jackson’s on June 7, and later, on September 30, the other two.
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