Amazon quietly introduces Alexa's male voice, gender-neutral wake word 'Ziggy'
AI (Artificial Intelligence) powered voice assistants have long drawn users' ire for using a female voice by default. Apple was the first to announce that Siri will no longer default to a female voice and users will choose a voice during the first run. Without much fanfare, Amazon recently gave Alexa a masculine voice option and a new gender-neutral wake word "Ziggy." Here's more.
'Ziggy' joins 'Computer,' 'Echo,' and 'Amazon' as Alexa's wake word
It has been nearly eight years since Amazon launched Alexa. Recently, The Ambient discovered that the e-commerce giant had introduced a new gender-neutral word "Ziggy" that activates the Alexa voice assistant. The option has been introduced despite the fact that Alexa can be configured to respond to words like "Computer," "Echo," and "Amazon." Despite the change, "Alexa" remains the voice assistant's default wake word.
Alexa's male voice was introduced alongside two new celebrity voices
Speaking of the new male-sounding voice, Alexa's new voice was added several days ago along with an announcement about new celebrity voices like those of Shaquille O'Neal and Melissa McCarthy. Apple, Samsung, and Google were quick to add male-sounding voices to their voice assistants, but Amazon's decision to join so late, and without much fanfare, has us rather puzzled.
Amazon can't decide if Alexa is female or just AI
To add to the confusion, The New York Times noted that when you ask Alexa about its gender, it replies, "I'm not a woman or a man, I'm an AI." Contradictorily, Amazon documentation refers to Alexa's personality using "she" and "her" pronouns. Presently, Alexa's male voice is only available to users in the US. Amazon hasn't specified when the voice will be available globally.
You can associate any wake word with any voice
The Verge observed that the new Ziggy wake word isn't associated with the new male voice by default. In fact, you can associate any Alexa wake word with any voice of your choice. To use the new voice options, command Alexa, "Change your voice." To revert to the default female voice, you can command Alexa, "Use your original voice."
Alexa can enable new voice, wake word via voice commands
To use the new wake word, try to command Alexa, "Change your wake word." Interestingly, when we requested Alexa to change its voice, the assistant simply refused and said, "I can't change my voice." So, it appears the command only works in the US. When we tried to get the assistant to change its wake word, we were asked to use the Alexa app.
One can set different wake words for different Alexa-enabled devices
On the Alexa app, first, choose the device you want to change the wake word for. Then, under Device Settings, you can use an option labeled Wake Word to pick a new wake word. The ability to set wake words individually for different Alexa-enabled devices could be useful in some cases, say when you want to wake just the living room Echo Dot.
