Amazon Discontinues Celebrities Voices for Alexa
TechCrunch reports that Alexa’s celebrity voices, Samuel L. Jackson, Shaquille O’Neal, and Melissa McCarthy are no longer available for purchase:
- This feature was launched in 2019, using Amazon’s AI technology, which uses a deep neural network to generate spoken audio from input text.
- While the feature was a hit, it may have been poorly marketed since it wasn’t well known to many users.
- Amazon has not given any reason why it pulled the plug on the celebrity voices, but it’s possible the feature didn’t make enough revenue to sustain it.
Précis
Amazon shuts down celebrity voices for Alexa which was launched in 2019. Its AI technology uses a deep neural network to generate spoken audio from input text. Even after being a hit feature, it wasn’t able to maintain enough revenue for Amazon to keep it running.
Original Article: https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/30/amazon-shuts-down-alexa-celebrity-voice-feature/
