Ever since its launch in November 2014, Alexa — Amazon’s voice-based assistant — has had a female voice only. However, Amazon will now offer a male voice for the first time. According to a report by The Verge, Amazon is introducing a new wake word called Ziggy. Ziggy is a masculine voice and users will still have the choice of Alexa’s voice. Till now, Amazon had wake words like Computer, Echo and Amazon but the voice was the same as Alexa’s.
The report further says that users will have the choice to switch between the two voice options — New or Original. They can also ask Alexa to Change your voice.
Users will have to set the new voice on their Alexa devices as it won’t be an automatic change. To get the new voice users will have to say “Alexa, change your voice” and the digital assistant will switch genders. Users will also have the option to change the voice by heading into the Settings menu of the Alexa app.
Amazon has been a bit late to bring this change as both Google and Apple offer multiple voice options for their assistants — Siri and Google Assistant. The company has made it clear that Alexa is not “a person with a physical body or a gender identity” and that “Amazon doesn’t let organizations (for example, skills or AVS) refer to Alexa as she or her.”
As of now, the male Alexa voice option — or Ziggy — will be available in the US. However, it is expected to make its way to other countries as well.
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