Software
The next famous voice of Amazon Alexa belongs to Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan.
Amazon is introducing the next high-profile celebrity voice choice to its digital assistant Alexa, this time exclusive to the Indian market. Starting next year, users of Alexa will increase the number of voice assistants to sound like Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan, one of India's most popular actors and household name for more than 1.3 billion people in the world.
India is a key growth market for Amazon outside the US, as the e-commerce site is already the most successful in Germany and other European countries.
But India 's heavy smartphone penetration and the increasing buying power of its vast population make it an important part of Amazon's global expansion over the next decade, especially in the field of voice interfaces for shopping and web browsing.
The baritone that has fascinated the Indian film industry for over five decades will soon offer a special voice experience to the many Indian clients that use Alexa. Yeah, you've learned it right now! Amitabh Bachchan has collaborated with Amazon to develop a exclusive celebrity voice experience, reads Amazon's blog post on Monday revealing Bachchan's collaboration.
Customers in India will be able to access Alexa 's legendary voice by buying the Amitabh Bachchan voice experience. This functionality is only available next year.
It's not clear how much Amazon plans to charge for Bachchan's Alexa voice, or whether it aims to make it available outside India. But last year, the company collaborated with actor Samuel L. Jackson for a similar collaboration with Alexa, and Bloomberg notes that the same methods are being used in a relationship with Bachchan, who registered a set of phrases for the Alexa website that Amazo used.
This means that the near-perfect imitation of Bachchan 's voice will be used with words and phrases that have never been captured in the studio. Google took a similar approach by recruiting singer John Legend 's voice for the limited-time Google Assistant add-on.
The choice Samuel L. Jackson, which costs 99 cents, will not fully replace Alexa with Bachchan, but will only be available for some requests. It will include common offers such as jokes, weather, shayaris, motivational quotes, advice and more. When released next year, customers in India can easily invoke the Amitabh Bachchan voice experience by just asking Alexa & immediately having their favorite celebrity voice to respond to famous requests.
