Alexa's sweet, feminine voice has filled the homes of millions over the past few years, but now Amazon has finally released a male counterpart. Amazon is late for this – Apple and Google have offered different voices, both female and male, in their virtual assistants for years. But late or not, it's good that Amazon is finally giving Alexa a choice.
In addition to the two main Alexa voices, Amazon also has celebrity voices (currently you can choose from Samuel L. Jackson, Shaquille O'Neal, and Melissa McCarthy). These are programmed to work with certain phrases and answer certain questions – mainly alarms and timers, jokes or weather reports. They also cost $5 each. Any request to an Echo device that is not supported by the chosen celebrity voice will receive a response from the native Alexa voice.
There are two ways to change Alexa's voice on your Echo devices:through the device itself or through the Alexa app. Note that changing the voice through the device was less reliable for us – the safest way to do this is through the app.
The voice change only applies to the Echo device you are currently using. If you want to switch to the male voice on multiple Echo speakers or displays in your home, you'll need to do this one at a time. It's also not possible to change the Alexa voice used by the smartphone app itself; which remains the original and feminine voice. Hopefully, in the future, Amazon will add a way to change this globally for all Echo devices in an account.
Without further ado, here's how to change Alexa's voice on an Echo device:
