HomePods will be on their way to homes in two weeks. However, between now and then is the Super Bowl. If the past two years have been a signal of things to come, there is going to be a ridiculous amount spent by Amazon and Google to get the word out about Alexa and Assistant. You can see a teaser here:
Let me guess? Alec Baldwin is going to become the speech synthesizer?
If I were Amazon and wanted to have my own HomePod deflate-gate around the Super Bowl, I’d come out with a flurry of releases, maybe like they did around the Google Home events.
What might be some ways Amazon could do this?
- Release speech synthesis where Alexa answers with the user’s voice as the speech synthesis (spooky but interesting)
- Have celebrity TTS’s available as options
- Ship out free Echo Dots with Amazon Prime Membership
- Create a super-human sounding version of Alexa that’s better than WaveNet or Tacotron
- Come out with a high end speaker that’s cheaper than the HomePod
Competition is good for the voice consumer.