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Shaquille O’Neal and Melissa McCarthy are the latest celebrities to lend their voices to Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa, the company said. Both voices can provide weather reports, jokes and personal stories when asked using the wake-up words “Hey Melissa” or “Hey Shaq”. Both voices cost $ 4.99 individually and are currently rolling out in the United States.
Amazon launched its Alexa Celebrity Voice initiative with Samuel L. Jackson in 2019, and claims this Alexa voice skill was the best-selling digital purchase on Amazon.com on the day it launched. In 2020, the company followed with Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan. None of these celebrities replace Alexa’s default voice, but instead offer answers to specific requests.
If you’re looking for a new Alexa voice for all of your requests, Amazon says it’s also releasing a new voice option, which you can activate with the “Alexa, change your voice” command. Separately, there’s also a new wake word, “Ziggy,” if you’re fed up with the existing selection (which currently includes Alexa, Computer, Echo, and Amazon).
To activate either celebrity voice, you can request an intro from Alexa. The commands “Alexa, introduce me to Shaq” or “Alexa, introduce me to Melissa” should do the trick. You can also manually activate each skill through the Amazon website.
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