By default, Amazon’s Alexa has a witty, yet robotic standard American accent. Fortunately, Alexa’s accents can be changed to English, Australian, and others on an Amazon Echo or other Alexa-powered device. You can also apply the same or different accents with each device in your home.
How to Change Alexa’s Voice
To change Alexa’s voice, launch the Amazon Alexa app. You can download it from Apple’s App Store for iPhone or from the Google Play Store for Android.
Next, open the Amazon Alexa app and tap on the “More” icon in the bottom-right corner.
From there, tap on “Settings.”
Tap on “Device Settings.”
On the “All Devices” screen, you will see a list of all of your available Alexa-powered devices, with each displaying their respective icons and online/offline statuses. Tap on the Alexa-powered device that you would like to change the accent for.
Once the Alexa-powered device’s page loads, tap on “Languages” and choose your desired language or accent. Some of the ones available include American English, Canadian, United Kingdom, and Australian accents.
Tap “Save Changes” after choosing an accent.
Note: Alexa’s default language can be configured in countries where English isn’t the primary language. The languages available are German, Japanese, Italian Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Not every language is fully supported. For example, some music playback voice commands might not be recognized.
How to Change Alexa’s Voice to a Celebrity’s
Alexa’s voice isn’t limited to American English, U.K. English, or other regional accents. Now, using the Skills feature, users can add popular celebrity voices like that of Samuel L. Jackson, Deadpool, Pikachu, and Gordon Ramsey. Note that each celebrity comes with a predetermined list of answers and does not offer Alexa’s full range of capabilities. Do not expect them to provide exact, up-to-the-minute weather updates where specific cities, temperatures, and forecasts are mentioned.
To change Alexa’s voice to a celebrity’s, you will need to download the celebrity’s respective Skill from Amazon’s website. For example, if you want to change Alexa’s voice to Samuel L. Jackson’s, visit the Samuel L. Jackson voice page, click “Buy Now with 1-Click,” and sync it automatically to the Amazon Alexa profile on the account on file.
You can also tap the “More” icon, scroll down to “Skills and Games,” type the name of the celebrity into the search box, and tap “Enable to Use.”
From there, you can summon Samuel L. Jackson by using the wake phrase “Hey, Samuel.”
Here are some examples of phrases that you could say to Alexa while using the “Hey, Samuel” wake phrase to produce one of his trademark, witty responses.
“Alexa, ask Samuel what his favorite movie line is.”
“Alexa, ask Samuel what his favorite drink is.”
“Hey Samuel, are you mad?”
“Hey Samuel, play some music.”
“Hey Samuel, what can you do?”
“Hey Samuel, what’s in your wallet?”
How Do I Make Alexa’s Voice Slower or Faster?
Making Alexa’s voice slower or faster is more straightforward than downloading a Skill or visiting an Amazon page to purchase and download a Skill.
To make Alexa speak slower or faster, say “Alexa, talk slower” and “Alexa, talk faster.” To make her go back to speaking at her original speed, say “Alexa, go back to your default speed.”
Note: You can only control Alexa’s speech speed with a voice command. There are no in-app settings that address this.
How Does Alexa’s Voice Work?
Amazon didn’t hire a woman to spend thousands and thousands of hours regurgitating responses to life’s most popular questions. Instead, Alexa is the product of Natural Language Processing technology, which allows computers to hear, interpret, and provide answers to voice commands. Alexa Voice Service (AVS) is the part of Amazon that intercepts all commands and issues a response in less than a second.
