On top of a tonne of new hardware, Amazon has announced this week that Samuel L. Jackson will be gifting his voice to Alexa in the near future.
[referenced url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2019/09/every-single-piece-of-hardware-amazon-announced-today/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/ykgm6nnvzciweijmbzas.jpg” title=”Every Single Piece Of Hardware Amazon Announced Today” excerpt=”More Alexa, anyone?”]
According to Fortune, users will be able to buy either a clean or swear-laden version of Jackson’s voice for Alexa-enabled devices later this year.
It will be part of a limited-time $US0.99 package where the actor will be able to tell you the weather, make jokes, act as alarm clock and perform a bunch of other regular Alexa functions.
Amazon also announced that from 2020 onward Alexa will be able to tell when users are frustrated with mistakes made by the virtual assistant. Alexa will be able to apologise for the mistake and offer alternative actions.
“As customers continue to use Alexa more often, they want her to be more conversational and can get frustrated when Alexa gets something wrong,” Amazon said in a press release.
“To help with this, we developed a deep learning model to detect when customers are frustrated, not with the world around them, but with Alexa. And when she recognises you’re frustrated with her, Alexa can now try to adjust, just like you or I would do.”
Lastly, Alexa will soon be able to switch between certain languages, such as English and Spanish in the U.S. and Hindi and English in India.
We’ve reached out to Amazon locally to find out whether the Samuel L. Jackson version of Alexa, frustration detection and multilingual household support will be coming to Australia.
[Fortune]