Alexa gets a professional 'newscaster' voice for reading the day's news

Amazon already gave Alexa the ability to whisper, and now it's rolling out another way to change the assistant's speaking style -- it's giving Alexa a "newscaster" voice. Starting today, when U.S. customers ask Alexa "what's the latest?" to hear the day's news, Alexa will respond using a voice that's similar to how a professional newscaster delivers news. The voice knows which words should be emphasized for a more realistic delivery of the news, explains Amazon. To achieve this new voice, Amazon took advantage of recent developments it made with Neural TTS technology, or NTTS. This technology delivers a more natural-sounding voice, and allows Alexa to adapt her speaking style based on the context of your request.