Beginning today, you can apply to participate in a developer preview that allows you to use eight Amazon Polly US English voices for utterances in your Alexa skills for free. This new capability can help you enrich your skill’s experience, making it more engaging for customers. For example, you can give a different voice to each character in adventure stories and games. Take this survey to apply to participate in the developer preview, where you can help us refine the feature.
What Is Amazon Polly?
Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech, allowing you to create applications that talk, and build entirely new categories of speech-enabled products. Amazon Polly is a text-to-speech service that uses advanced deep learning technologies to synthesize speech that sounds like a human voice. Visit the Amazon Polly product page for more information.
Choosing Different Voices in Your Skills
If you already use multiple voices in your skill via using .mp3 files or another technique, consider Amazon Polly for its natural-sounding voices and ease of maintenance. If your skill uses only a single voice today, changing the voice or adding different voices in the right places may allow you to provide an even more engaging experience. Using Amazon Polly, you can choose a different voice for any utterance by using the Structured Speech Markup Language (SSML) and specifying an Amazon Polly voice using the “voice name” tag. It’s as easy as that. You can even use an Amazon Polly voice for every utterance in your skill if you like.
Apply for the Developer Preview Today
If you have an idea for using Amazon Polly voices in your skill, tell us about it via this survey. We’ll select a subset of the skills that apply, and will provide more information to those selected. Even if you are not selected for the preview, we’ll let you know when more information about using Amazon Polly voices in Alexa skills is available.
Make Money by Creating Engaging Skills Customers Love
You can make money through Alexa skills using in-skill purchasing or Amazon Pay for Alexa Skills. You can also make money for eligible skills that drive some of the highest customer engagement with Alexa Developer Rewards. Download our guide to learn which product best meets your needs.
Build a New Skill, Earn Developer Perks
Bring your big idea to life with Alexa and earn perks through our tiered rewards system. Publish a skill in May and receive an Alexa backpack. If 1,000 customers use your skill in its first 30 days in the Alexa Skills Store, you can also earn a free Echo Plus. Learn more about our promotion and start building today.
Source: Alexa Developer Blog
