Amazon's Alexa to become more emotional
Fox News Headlines 24/7 Correspondent Carley Shimkus tells 'America's Newsroom HQ' that Amazon developers are making Alexa more human-based on feedback from users
"Alexa...please stop crying."
Fox News Headlines 24/7 Correspondent Carley Shimkus told "America's News HQ" host Arthel Neville on Thursday that she didn't know if Amazon's new development that makes Alexa more emotional was "cool or creepy."
The company announced Wednesday that the operating system received an initial skills upgrade, giving it a range of emotional responses.
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The new emotional responses use a technology referred to as Neural Text-to-Speech, which converts written text into synthesized speech and shifts in tempo, pitch and volume.
On the "Alexa Skills Kit blog," the new capability could reportedly be used for tasks like mimicking a news anchor reporting headlines or a radio host offering new music.
"Alexa is definitely becoming more human and can now sound either excited and happy or disappointed and sad depending on what you say," Shimkus explained. "And so, that means that Alexa is actually interpreting their words and responding appropriately according to the correct emotional response."
She told Neville that the company made the advancements "because of customer feedback."
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"Apparently, according to Amazon, they said that more customers like when Alexa sounds more human," she said. "I disagree. I think it's kind of strange."
She added: "I'd like to keep my humans sounding like humans and my robots sounding like robots, but call me old fashioned."
A date to release the "emo Alexa" to the public has yet to be determined.
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