Finally, users can change the default voice to make Alexa a man
This is huge news for Amazon’s digital assistant… Alexa now has a male voice option and also a new name: Ziggy.
Starting with the new voice option and, while you’ve been able to change Alexa’s accent or get some celebrity voice action, this is the first time we’ve had a genuine new voice for Alexa… and the first time in any region that voice has been a male one.
Both Siri and the Google Assistant are available in both male and female variants, so it was about time Amazon’s digital assistant caught up.
The new voice, which you can hear in the video below, is only available in the US for now but we’d expect to see (hear?) it rolling out to other regions, albeit with regional twangs, in the coming months.
To get the new voice simply say, “Alexa, change your voice” and your digital assistant will switch genders. You can also change the voice within the settings menu on your Alexa app.
As well as the new Alexa male voice, there’s also a new name on offer for the Amazon AI assistant… Ziggy.
Sure, you’ve been able to change your Alexa wake word for a few years now but, until Ziggy was born, we’d argue there wasn’t really a genuine alternative name on offer with the previous alternative choices limited to Echo, Computer or Amazon.
A new, bonafide, name for Alexa and a new name is a huge shift for the platform.
The name part is especially important – we constantly get contacted by groups representing real-life Alexas, who have had a tough time in the past few years with their name now being synonymous with a voice assistant living inside of a smart speaker.
While Ziggy won’t change that scenario, it might take the pressure off of all the Alexas out there a little bit.
