Amazon has invited developers to participate in a “developer preview” that will allow them to use as many as 8 ‘Amazon Polly’ US English voices for utterances in their Alexa apps. And, it’s for free.
Announcing this on its official blog, Amazon explained the new capability can help developers “enrich your skill’s experience” & make it even more engaging for customers.
As an example, a developer can give a different voice to each character in adventure stories.
What Really Is Amazon Polly?
Amazon Polly is a service that turns brings otherwise boring text into life with “lifelike” speech. Now, using Polly, developers can create many Alexa-like voices in their applications which will talk, & build entirely new categories of speech-enabled products. Amazon Polly is a text-to-speech service that uses advanced deep learning technologies to synthesize speech that sounds like a human voice.
Developers: If you already use multiple voices in your skill via using .mp3 files or another technique, you may wanna consider Amazon Polly for its natural-sounding voices & ease of maintenance, says Amazon. If your skill uses only a single voice today, changing the voice or adding different voices in the right places may allow you to provide an even more engaging experience. Using Amazon Polly, you can choose a different voice for any utterance by using the Structured Speech Markup Language (SSML) & specifying an Amazon Polly voice using the “voice name” tag. It’s as easy as that. You can even use an Amazon Polly voice for every utterance in your skill if you like.
