Amazon turns to celebrity voices to bolster use of its virtual assistant Alexa

Amazon.com Inc on Wednesday said actor Samuel L. Jackson and other celebrities will voice speech for the company's virtual assistant Alexa, one of a range of new features designed to attract more users to the service. The news, along with announcements of more voice-controlled Echo speakers, a multilingual mode for Alexa and an additional privacy feature for deleting voice recordings regularly, underscores the investment the world's largest online retailer is putting into voice-controlled computing, a new area of technology in which it is competing against Alphabet Inc's Google Assistant and Apple Inc's Siri. Read More...

SEATTLE, Sept 25 (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc on Wednesday said actor Samuel L. Jackson and other celebrities will voice speech for the company’s virtual assistant Alexa, one of a range of new features designed to attract more users to the service.

The news, along with announcements of more voice-controlled Echo speakers, a multilingual mode for Alexa and an additional privacy feature for deleting voice recordings regularly, underscores the investment the world’s largest online retailer is putting into voice-controlled computing, a new area of technology in which it is competing against Alphabet Inc’s Google Assistant and Apple Inc’s Siri.

Amazon’s celebrity voice feature will cost $0.99, Senior Vice President David Limp said at an event in Seattle announcing the news. (Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin in Seattle Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)