Alexa’s New Voice Feature: Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel L Jackson, American actor known notably from films such as “Pulp Fiction” and “Captain Marvel, is now available on Amazon’s Alexa.  Amazon announced that Jackson’s voice was going to available soon on Alexa in September of 2019.  Furthermore, the voice can be purchased for 99 cents plus tax for a limited time.  The price tag of the voice option will spike up to 5 dollars later.  This will be the same for the other celebrity voice features that Amazon will present in the future.  Jackson can respond to questions about the weather, the news, and even questions about his personal life.  To access the feature, the user must say “Alexa, ask Samuel L. Jackson” and the question after that phrase.  Jackson isn’t completely replacing Alexa, Alexa is still available for use as Jackson’s voice is just an alternative voice option for the Amazon Alexa.  According to the official Amazon page however, there are limitations that come with this voice feature.  Jackson can’t set reminders, shop for you, or even create a list.

In addition, Jackson’s voice isn’t completely relying on prior recorded phrases, Jackson’s voice is powered in part by Amazon’s text to speech model.  Asking Jackson for the weather is one response that was prior recorded but other responses are powered by this text to speech model.  There is also a clean and explicit version for Jackson’s voice, in order to keep the program family friendly in certain scenarios.  Although the program is limited in terms of questions that the user can ask Jackson, this is one of many Amazon’s new experiments that the company is willing to test out.