Amazon's Alexa Can Now Whisper and Bleep Out Words, Change Its Pitch

In a bid to provide more natural voice experience, Amazon has introduced new Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) features to its voice assistant Alexa that allows it to whisper, bleep, and even change its pitch.

SSML is a standardised markup language that allows developers to control pronunciation, intonation, timing and emotion.

"We are excited to announce five new SSML tags in the US, Britain and Germany that you can use with Alexa, including whispers, expletive bleeps and more," the company said in a blog post.

SSML support on Alexa allows users to control how Alexa generates speech from their skill's text responses. Developers can add pauses, change pronunciation, spell out a word, and add short audio snippets using existing SSML tags. Now, Amazon has added five more:

1. Whispers - Convey a softer dialog
2. Expletive beeps - Bleep out words
3. Sub - Ask Alexa to say something other than what's written
4. Emphasis - Change the rate and volume at which Alexa speaks
5. Prosody - Developers can use this tag to control the volume, pitch, and rate of speech

Amazon is set to host a webinar on May 18 on the new code, that will give a more clear idea on SSML.