• From Bloomberg:
"Amazon.com Inc. has signed up Bollywood mega star Amitabh Bachchan for its Alexa voice assistant, stealing a march over rivals Apple Inc.’s Siri and Alphabet Inc.’s Google Assistant as a country of 1.3 billion people adapts to voice-enabled internet services … Bachchan, 77, is often described as India’s answer to Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro combined. His star wattage and deep voice have featured in hundreds of commercials peddling everything from PepsiCo Inc. colas, Cadbury Ltd. chocolates and even a UNICEF-backed polio vaccination campaign."
The story says that " Amazon will apply neural speech technology to make Alexa sound exactly like Bachchan no matter what question he is answering without needing to record every word in his voice in the studio. Users can buy Bachchan’s voice as a skill to provide weather updates, recite poetry and give advice."
Bloomberg suggests that Bachchan's iconic status in India will give Amazon an advantage there in its competition with other smart speakers.
