Prototype
Emotional News
What if…
my smart speaker/virtual assistant finally sounded a little more human?
Problem
Smart speakers are no longer a rarity. Alexa, Siri and the Google assistant are increasingly finding their way into households and are supposed to be a help in everyday life. Although the quality of many voice engines' pronunciation is already well developed, some users sometimes miss the empathic sensitivity of their assistants. Especially when it comes to the presentation of current news the quality of a newscaster is often lacking. After all, the significance of news is not only based on the quality of the text but also on the emphasis given by the speaker. How can this attribute be acquired by a virtual assistant?
Solution
"Emotional News" should make it possible to convey emotions as additional information carriers. The wheel doesn't have to be reinvented, but existing configurations of speech engines are used. As these are not yet fully developed, a revision within this framework is absolutely necessary. In addition to messages, this tool could also be extended to e-mails or customer services. In this way the expressiveness of texts can be increased and the desired empathy of a smart speaker can be generated.