Build a unique Brand Voice with Amazon Polly

AWS is pleased to announce a new feature in Amazon Polly called Brand Voice, a capability in which you can work with the Amazon Polly team of AI research scientists and linguists to build an exclusive, high-quality, Neural Text-to-Speech (NTTS) voice that represents your brand’s persona. Brand Voice allows you to differentiate your brand by incorporating a unique vocal identity into your products and services. Amazon Polly has been working with Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) Canada and National Australia Bank (NAB) to create two unique Brand Voices, using the same deep learning technology that powers the voice of Alexa.

The Amazon Polly team has built a voice for KFC Canada in a Southern US English accent for the iconic Colonel Sanders to voice KFC’s latest Alexa skill. The voice-activated skill available through any Alexa-enabled Amazon device allows KFC lovers in Canada to chat all things chicken with Colonel Sanders himself, including re-ordering their favorite KFC. Listen to the following voice sample for KFC Canada:

KFC Voice Sample

Listen now Voiced by Amazon Polly

“We are excited to be one of the first brands to adopt the Amazon Polly enhanced text-to-speech voice technology to create a seamless and distinctively KFC re-ordering experience for our fans.” said Jason Cassidy, Marketing Director, KFC Canada. “The Colonel was passionate about his fried chicken and this new skill makes re-ordering your favorite KFC menu items easier than ever but in a fun and memorable way” concludes Cassidy.

The Amazon Polly team also built a friendly Australian English NTTS voice for NAB, whose persona was carefully crafted to be unique and consistent with their brand persona. This customer service-oriented Brand Voice was launched as part of a broader NAB contact center migration to Amazon Connect, and is the first case of a Polly Brand Voice built for an Amazon Connect customer. Listen to the following voice sample for NAB:

NAB Voice Sample

Listen now Voiced by Amazon Polly

Laurent De Segur, General Manager of Digital and Assisted Channels at National Australia Bank (NAB), shares that “We’re looking to Amazon Connect to help us improve the experience customers have when they contact our call centers. For that reason, it was also important that the voice we created using Amazon Polly Brand Voice felt both uniquely NAB and consistent with our position and what our customers expect when they call us. We’re thrilled to be a global leader using this voice-first digital innovation – and even more excited to see how our customers interact with the voice and experience as we gradually roll this out.”

Amazon Polly uses NTTS technology and generative AI techniques to not only create better-quality voices, but also apply or match speaking styles of a persona you want the voice to reflect. This deep learning model enables voices to acquire intonation patterns from natural speech data, and reproduce utterances in a similar style or tone. This opens up a breadth of opportunities to create custom voices with a persona or speaking style that your company and brand identify with. To learn more about Brand Voice click here.

About the Authors

Rafal Kuklinski is a Director at Amazon leading the Text-to-Speech technology team, and the Managing Director of the Amazon Development Center in Poland. Rafal has been with Amazon for almost 8 years working on speech synthesis systems that power a wide range of Amazon products and services, including Amazon Fire tablets, Kindle Readers, Amazon Alexa and an AWS TTS service Amazon Polly. He works on application of Deep Learning and signal processing techniques for prosody modeling of Speech Synthesis and Natural Language Processing. Prior to Amazon, Rafal held a variety of technical and leadership positions at companies such as General Electric and Lufthansa, working on technologies ranging from flight planning systems to video compression and analysis systems.

Ankit Dhawan is a Senior Product Manager for Amazon Polly, a technology enthusiast, and a huge Liverpool FC fan. When not working on delighting our customers, you will find him exploring the Pacific Northwest with his wife and dog. He is an eternal optimist, loves reading biographies, and playing poker. You can indulge him in a conversation on technology, entrepreneurship, or soccer anytime of the day.