Amitabh Bachchan is Bollywood’s most significant actor and one of the reasons for his popularity is his deep voice. Amazon’s voice assistant has a few celebrity voices as well one of which is Samuel L. Jackson and now Amitabh Bachchan is also going to lend a voice to Amazon’s Alexa.
He will be the first Indian celebrity/actor to lend his voice to Amazon’s digital assistant starting next year, as the Silicon Valley giant expands its presence in the significant market.
Amitabh Bachchan is one of the most reputed Indian actors. The 77-year-old actor has been the star of the industry for nearly half a century, and his deep-toned voice is instantly recognizable to listeners in the country of 1.3 billion.
As a lot of foreign mega-companies have started to invest more and more in the Indian market, Amazon has also spent tens of billions of dollars in India in recent years.
According to Amazon India, “Bachchan’s “voice experience” feature will become available for purchase on Alexa next year. “It will include popular offerings like jokes, weather, poetry, motivational quotes, advice, and more.”
This strategy was first carried out by google which gave users the option of hearing singer John Legend on the Google Assistant. Now Amazon is also following the same approach first Alexa first rolled out a celebrity voice option last year with actor Samuel L Jackson and now Amitabh Bachchan.
According to Mr. Bachchan, “I am excited to create this voice experience,” adding that, “With voice technology, we are building something to engage more effectively with my audience and well-wishers.”
Amazon has a lot of competition as voice-activated devices such as Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant for consumers are also there and Amazon is battling Walmart-backed Flipkart and JioMart, owned by Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani.
By Matthias Samuel