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As Amazon's Alexa completes five years in India, the company on Thursday introduced a new male voice option for Alexa's responses.
With this, Indian users will be able to switch between Alexa's original voice and a new masculine-sounding voice.
"Over the past five years, our aim has been to build Alexa from India and for India, and I truly believe that our journey is synonymous to the evolution of ambient computing in the country. As we look ahead, our focus remains on bringing to life newer voice, touch, motion and vison-enabled experiences for consuming entertainment, completing tasks, and accessing information", Dilip R.S., Country Manager for Alexa, Amazon India, said in a statement.
The new voice can respond in both English and Hindi languages.
The company said that users can change Alexa's voice by saying "Alexa, change your voice" on the Echo device or from the Alexa app by going to individual device settings and selecting Alexa's voice.
Users will be able to use any of the wake words -- including Alexa, Echo, Computer and Amazon to ask questions in English, Hindi and Hinglish.
Moreover, the company mentioned that, in 2022, requests to Alexa for music increased by almost 53 per cent, with customers streaming songs through providers such as Amazon Prime Music, Spotify, JioSaavn and Apple Music.
Requests to Alexa for controlling smart home appliances increased by 515 per cent.
Further, the company revealed that users' love for interacting with Alexa is reflected in the questions such as "Alexa, how are you" (31,680 times per day), and "Alexa, I love you" (21,600 times per day), an increase of 214 per cent and 275 per cent respectively.
--IANS
shs/shb/
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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First Published: Thu, February 23 2023. 17:30 IST
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