Harrison Ford And Adam Driver Lend Their Voices To Amazon’s Alexa
Like father, like son when it comes to on-screen relatives Harrison Ford and Adam Driver. The duo, who portray two generations of Solos in the Star Wars films, are set to join Samuel L. Jackson as celebrity voice options for Alexa, its cloud-based digital assistant.
Upon release in early 2020, the Ford and Driver “voice packs” will be available individually for the special introductory price of 99 cents and $1.49, respectively. Similar to Jackson’s, the two new packs will be powered by Amazon’s Neural Text-to-Speech technology, which enables Alexa to mimic the speech inflections of real people. In other words, the Alexa-Ford and Alexa-Driver won’t use “canned” or pre-recorded audio when engaging with users.
Unlike the voice pack for Jackson, who coincidentally also appeared in Star Wars films as Jedi Master Mace Windu, Ford and Driver will only be available as PG-rated Alexa voices.
Driver’s voice pack, however, will feature two voices for the price of one. Alexa users will be able to choose between Adam Driver in regular Ben Solo voice or his villainous altar ego, Kylo Ren.
In a first for Alexa, the Driver voice pack will introduce a fun, time-based feature that utilizes both voices when appropriate. Our source claims the “Force” mode will alternate between Driver’s Ben Solo voice during “Light Side” hours, and his heavily modulated Kylo Ren voice during “Dark Side” hours. We anticipate this being a huge hit among Star Wars fans, especially if the latest Rise Of Skywalker rumors come true.
The deal was supposedly spearheaded by Harrison Ford, who has previously appeared in a Super Bowl commercial for Amazon’s Alexa. Ford reached out to Driver and Lucasfilm, which then engaged Amazon to make the collaboration a reality.
Sadly, the planned Daisy Ridley voice pack has been postponed indefinitely. “Alexa is nowhere near being able to simulate Rey’s powers. We can easily recreate the voice, but focus groups have shown that Alexa users have unrealistic expectations upon hearing it. As it stands, I’m not sure our digital assistant will ever be able to do half the things Rey can, and the last thing we want to do is offer customers a less-than-satisfying experience,” said an Amazon spokesperson.
Look for the Ford and Driver voice packs in early 2020 on Amazon. “Alexa, remind us to purchase Harrison Ford and Adam Driver’s voice packs early next year.”
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