The day you’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived. Instead of waiting for the latest nuggets from Marvel Studios or Chris Rock’s upcoming Saw reboot, fans of Samuel L. Jackson will be able to invite the actor into their own homes. Not literally, of course, but close enough, as Amazon’s Alexa will soon feature his iconic voice (and swearing?). Yes, that’s right — Jackson will soon be telling you how to cook that motherf*cking chicken right, setting alarms, and reading Wikipedia entries aloud.
According to Variety, the actor “inked a deal with Amazon to provide first celebrity voice option for Alexa, its cloud-based digital assistant.” More vocal options from other celebrities will presumably be available sometime in 2020, but later this year, current and future Amazon Alexa owners will be able to purchase Jackson’s soothing voice for the low price of 99 cents.
“But wait a minute,” you’re probably thinking. “Alexa can say a lot of things and her responses aren’t necessarily prerecorded. So what’s Jackson going to do, sit in a recording booth and offer Amazon every possible permutation of every single letter, word, phrase, or sound they can think of? That’s not possible!” You’re right. It’s not. Instead, Amazon said they’ll be using what they call “Neural Text-to-Speech technology” to capture Jackson’s cadence:
That’s designed to make Alexa’s default female voice more human-sounding, with more emotive and expressive speech. It also lets Alexa replicate speech inflections of real people, too — meaning Jackson’s voice on Alexa will be synthesized, rather than delivered as pre-recorded words or phrases.
Needless to say, the news of Jackson’s voice — in both clean and explicit versions — becoming the first of many celebrity variations on Alexa stirred plenty of reactions on social media.
Samuel L. Jackson doesn’t know how to do anything other than secure the bag and I love him for it. https://t.co/rEiForoZNG
— Matthew A. Cherry (@MatthewACherry) September 25, 2019
Me: Alexa is dumb, I'll never get one.
Amazon: Alexa now comes with Samuel L. Jackson's voice and it's uncensored. pic.twitter.com/m55eUA5qgS
— Ty Rushing (@Rushthewriter) September 25, 2019
https://twitter.com/max_read/status/1176926061688496129
(after your third consecutive failed attempt to give Alexa instruction)
ALEXA JACKSON: "ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER! DO YOU SPEAK IT? SAY 'MMBRLFLRF' AGAIN! I DARE YOU! I DOUBLE DARE YOU!" https://t.co/q10Cambopw— David Mack (@DavidAlanMack) September 25, 2019
https://twitter.com/Multiverse/status/1176962561943715840
APPLE: We put an extra lens in the iPhone camera and our watch now stays on
AMAZON: We built smart eyeglasses, smart earbuds, a smart ring, a sidewalk that senses everything, a surveillance system for dogs, a talking doorbell, an oven, and turned Alexa into Samuel L. Jackson
— Will Oremus (@WillOremus) September 25, 2019
The future is awesome, sometimes.
(Via Variety)