Guys, you know how Alexa’s been helping us navigate and discover countless things on the web – from music to knowledge, news, and more? It seems Alexa has become a part of our lives today. If you too have been used to calling Alexa for making you laugh after a bad day and more, there is a piece of great news for you. Amazon is coming up with Alexa’s male counterpart! Yes, we are talking about Alexa’s male voice Ziggy.
Alexa’s male counterpart will be called Ziggy! This new voice will be available on devices powered by Amazon’s Echo smart speakers. As per Amazon, they are working on this project since last year and are now ready to bring it onboard soon.
There is no official confirmation yet on when exactly Ziggy will be available to use but according to reports by The Verge, it will most likely happen in 2020.
The company has already put up a job listing that says: “We are seeking an experienced software development engineer interested in building an intelligent personal assistant that understands human speech and uses it to interact with users in natural ways.
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The new range of male voices will be available for download soon for all Alexa devices in the US and Canada. Users can just update their devices with the latest software update and then select their preferred voice from the drop-down menu under Settings > Voice Selection > Voice Gender.
With this update, Amazon has made it possible for users to choose between female or male voices based on their preferences. This move is seen as an attempt by Amazon to make its digital assistant more inclusive in nature by providing options to its users according to their needs and preferences rather than restricting them to certain parameters only.
Amazon is thrilled to announce that Amazon is launching Alexa’s male voice Ziggy. They’ve been working on him for a long time, so we hope you’ll love him as much as we do!
You can now access Ziggy in the same way you’d access Alexa: by asking “Alexa,” “Hey Alexa,” “Computer” or “Echo.” And if you have multiple devices with Alexa in your home, they’ll all respond to Ziggy too (if they’re set up on the same account). So if you have multiple Echo devices, which one will answer when someone asks for Ziggy? It doesn’t matter—they all will!
Ziggy has been designed with a more natural-sounding voice than Alexa’s current female voice. He has a deeper pitch and lowers energy level than his predecessor.
Since the introduction of digital assistants in the 2010s, all of them have had a female voice, notably Alexa, Siri, Cortana, and Google Assistant on smart devices. Gender-neutral campaigners were outraged, and they expressed their concerns to technology corporations such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. They accused them of stereotyping female-voiced digital assistants.
For changes, Apple newly revised iOS 14.5, which changed the default Siri voice on iPhones from female to male. In chosen global regions, it now offers a more broad range of voices and dialects. In some global areas, the user must select the voice of voices and accents. While setting up a new iPhone or after a factory reset, the user must choose the voice of the assistant.
Amazon has now announced the availability of Ziggy, a male voice for Amazon’s digital assistant, on Echo smart speakers and other devices. It’s being rolled out as part of a software upgrade. It will take some time for all global regions to be reached.
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You can change the voice by:
Asking Alexa: To switch between the two voices, just call Alexa and ask her to change the voice. Your command, “Alexa, please change your voice,” is all Alexa needs to bring Ziggy to work for you. This, however, is a device-specific option meaning you will need to set the voice of Alexa to the new voice on each device Alexa is installed on.
Changing the settings: If you want to use Ziggy – the new masculine-sounding voice across all devices that have been running Alexa so far, just change the settings in your Amazon app and change it as you want.
Open the app -> go to Devices -> choose Settings -> General -> choose Alexa’s voice -> to choose the voice (Ziggy or Alexa) and you are done.
So, if you have been among the countless Amazon and Echo lovers who have been used to the feminine voice greeting you in the morning to wake you up and follow your commands to change music, tell you the funniest jokes, and more, you can now try the male voice option as well for all that Alexa has been assisting you with so far. While the option is not available for Echo and Amazon users worldwide, we hope that Ziggy Alexa’s male voice will be available for all shortly.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s):–
You can choose between Amazon’s computer echo or Ziggy, whichever you choose.
Amazon will release a new male voice for Alexa in mid-2021. Along with the new Ziggy name, a new tone was released. For the time being, the new voice is only available in the United States, and it may be activated by saying, “Alexa, change your voice.” You may also change the voice from within the Alexa app.
Unlike Alexa, who has a feminine-sounding voice, Echo speakers now have a new masculine-sounding voice option called ‘Ziggy.’ The name scheming appears to be chosen to meet Amazon’s “A to Z” branding style.
You must modify it on each Echo speaker or display it separately. Scroll down and pick Wake Word from the Settings icon in the top right-hand corner. Just choose a new wake word for yourself. (As previously said, you have the option of using Amazon, Computer, Echo, or Ziggy.)
“Alexa, please introduce me to Jarvis,” you say. If you haven’t already done so, go ahead and get the voice pack. You can choose whether or not you want explicit content. The voice change should be confirmed by Alexa.
Users of Amazon Echo can now choose between three celebrity personalities: Samuel L. Jackson, Shaquille O’Neal, and Melissa McCarthy. A one-time purchase of $4.99 is required to access each celebrity’s voice. To enable celebrity voices on your Amazon Echo device, follow the steps outlined above in the instructions. These are the steps above in the guide that you need to take to enable celebrity voices on your Amazon Echo device.
Since always, Alexa has been a feminine voice but with Amazon introducing her male counterpart Ziggy, now you can have a male assistant to help you carry out various artificial intelligent tasks for you on just a command. As already discussed above, Ziggy is the keyword to trigger Alexa and tell her to turn on her male counterpart Ziggy. It is not particularly associating Ziggy with the male voice or Alexa with the female voice but you can use any of the two options with Alexa wake-up words, as per your choice.
If you want to switch between the male and female sounding voice options, Amazon has allowed that too! All you need to do is just ask your voice assistant (Ziggy or Alexa) to change voice – from Alexa to Ziggy and from Ziggy to Alexa, as you like. But, Amazon devices including Echo speakers will still have Alexa as their built-in voice assistant. If you want, you can change it from Alexa to Ziggy by saying, “Alexa please change your voice.” And obeying your command, Alexa will become Ziggy and you will hear Alexa’s male voice answering and assisting you from there.
If you wish to return to Alexa, the process is not difficult. All you have to do is now ask Ziggy to please change the voice and Alexa will come back to assist you once again with the same very familiar feminine-sounding voice. Furthermore, you can change the app settings to change the smart speaker’s voice – Alexa or Ziggy.
Other than Amazon, Google and Apple also extend multiple voice support options for their Vas (virtual assistants). Interestingly, the reason behind Amazon bringing Ziggy is that a lot of parents whose girls were named Alexa had been complaining about this and requesting Amazon to change its name from Alexa to something else because their daughters were being bullied and annoyed at schools just because of the same name.
The masculine voice of Amazon is seemingly available only in the US initially but then we expect it to be launched soon for other countries as well in the future.
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