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Breen discusses his career history, his work in text-to-speech research and innovation, and the science behind Alexa’s enhanced voice styles and emotional speech capabilities.
Conversational AI

Alexa & Friends features Andrew Breen, Alexa TTS Research senior manager

Hear Breen discuss his work leading research teams in speech synthesis and text-to-speech technologies, the science behind Alexa’s enhanced voice styles, and more.

By Staff writer
October 15, 2020
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In late September, Amazon announced the latest devices and services slated for release to Alexa customers during its annual Devices event. The announcements included new technology that enables Alexa to be more expressive and natural sounding via improved text-to-speech (TTS) technologies.

On October 29, Jeff Blankenburg hosted senior manager of speech research Andrew Breen on Alexa & Friends to discuss the newest TTS capabilities available on Alexa. Breen has 20 years of experience leading research teams in speech synthesis and TTS technologies, and currently leads an Alexa team focused on TTS research to improve Alexa’s voice for the delight of customers. Watch the recorded interview below to hear more about Breen’s career history, his work in TTS research and innovation, and the science behind Alexa’s enhanced voice styles and emotional speech capabilities.

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