CNBC | Todd Haselton
Amazon‘s Alexa voice assistant will soon speak more emotionally. The company announced new tools on Wednesday that will allow developers who build Alexa into skills to express excitement or disappointment with varying levels of intensity.
The voice assistant will be able to respond with high, medium or low degrees of the two emotions. Amazon said it built the feature because “customer feedback indicates that overall satisfaction with the voice experience increased by 30% when Alexa responded by emotions.”
Here’s what an excited Alexa with high intensity sounds like, for example:
And here’s how a disappointed Alexa with high intensity sounds:
Amazon said this could be used in games, when Amazon might respond to a correct or incorrect answer. Amazon is also rolling emotions out to Alexa’s voice outside of skills created by developers.
“We’re continuing to introduce Alexa capabilities that will help create a more natural and intuitive experience for our customers,” a spokesperson told CNBC. “For example, customers will begin to notice improvement when asking for sports updates depending on their sports team affinity, results of a recent game, and additional contextual signals. Alexa will deliver the update in an enthusiastic, upbeat voice if their team has won the recent game or just clinched a position in the play-offs.”
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