Alexa’s celebrity voices are removed by Amazon, and refunds are available upon

May 31, 2023 | 10:37:29

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You’ve lost your chance to use Shaq’s voice with your Alexa devices if you’ve been saving up for it. Shaquille O’Neal, Melissa McCarthy, and, dare we say it, Samuel L. Jackson are among the celebrities whose voices are no longer available on Amazon’s Alexa platform. According to The Verge, the various voice options won’t be offered for purchase and won’t work even if you’ve already paid for them.

That brings up the subject of refunds, and it appears that none will be given. Since the voice options initially cost just $1 before rising to $5 in recent months, this is not particularly shocking news. Consumers never enjoy purchasing something only to have it vanish into thin air. However, Amazon assured Engadget that refunds will be handled upon request, so all is not lost. “Celebrity voices are coming to an end after three years. Customers may use these voices for a brief period of time and then contact our customer service team to request a refund “penned a company spokesperson. Samuel L. Jackson is leaving soon, and the purchase page states that the feature will stop functioning as of the following week.

For those who were unaware, this feature was an addition to Alexa that changed the voice assistant’s typically cheery tones into those of a famous person. All of this was somewhat constrained in comparison to Alexa’s full feature set because celebrities don’t work with many skills and don’t offer reminders. However, they can make jokes, respond to inquiries, and carry out easy voice-assisted tasks. Jackson was the first person to use the service in 2019, but Shaq and McCarthy soon followed.

Why then did Amazon disable the feature?

The company’s hardware division recently laid off thousands of workers involved in designing and producing Echo speakers, so that could be part of it. Alexa is also no longer the hottest thing in the universe. Again, the feature set for these voices was rather meager, so perhaps not enough people purchased them to make up for the licensing expenses. Then there is the proverbial “AI elephant in the room.” Celebrity voices may no longer be appropriate given that reports claim Amazon is developing its own large language model (LLM), similar to ChatGPT, in order to drastically change Alexa.