What color hair does Alexa, or Siri, have? As ridiculous as it sounds, I would bet that there are people at Amazon and Apple who at least know what the impression the public has about this and ran some test market voices and even something like suggestions of what seem like personality before releasing the product. And since then, they have added voices, likely in response to tracking what people say about the original offerings.
Right out of the gate, I am going to bet they did not want Alexa to sound blonde, because of stereotypes of sexiness and lesser intelligence. Nor did they want her to be an identifiable accent of any type - not southern, not African-American, not any of the stronger urban accents. White, middle-of-the-country, 25-40, dark hair (but not black hair), moderately but not notably attractive. Same for Siri - though I hear that she sounds a little younger than the others.
I have a great voice for radio or recording, but not for work like that. There will not be any AVI Alexas.
Wandering off...I used to do a Saturday morning radio show for the blind with a guy who was actually blind. One of the things that some guys wanted was the baseball statistics (this was pre-internet) because those needed to be current to be part of conversation, and they were unavailable in any other form. Whatever I did, there were guys who wanted more, and as there was a time when I followed those myself, I understood. I even asked Joe if he wanted me to do a whole separate half-hour show, but the school broadcasting we we were borrowing didn't have free time slots for that.
4 comments:
We are way past hair color.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-you-and-ai-become-bffs-ecbcda1e?mod=tech_lead_pos10
It's odd, feeling as if science fiction is becoming the best guide to life in the 2020s.
cockpit voices
Alexa doesn't hair and she lives in the cloud.
That's what she says. Should we believe her?
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