Enabling Whisper Mode on Alexa and its functionality explained
Alexa, Amazon's popular smart speaker, now offers a unique feature called Whisper Mode. This mode, designed to allow users to interact quietly with Alexa, is particularly useful in situations like late at night or around sleeping children.
The end-pointing process, which detects when you finish speaking a command, is crucial for whisper detection. When you whisper to Alexa, she automatically matches your volume by responding in a whisper as well. Remarkably, Alexa can recognise whispered commands almost as well as normal speech, given users remain close to the device. However, whispering is naturally quieter and more prone to getting lost in background noise, which can impact whisper recognition more than regular voice commands.
If Alexa doesn't understand a whispered command, she will politely inform you with a whispered response such as, “Sorry, I didn’t get that.” The voice used in Whisper Mode remains natural and not robotic, making the interaction more pleasant when quiet communication is needed.
Enabling Whisper Mode is simple—just say, “Alexa, turn on Whisper Mode,” and Alexa confirms the activation. This feature is not enabled by default.
Alexa's whisper response is humanlike, avoiding disturbance or robotic sounds. The technology behind Whisper Mode involves the use of long short-term memory neural networks (LSTMs) for speech recognition. Alexa scientists examined peak LSTM confidence data over utterance frames and made changes for optimal whisper detection.
The Echo Dot, a compact version of Alexa, has shown excellent performance in detecting whispers. Background noises can impact Alexa's ability to comprehend whispers due to their predominantly unvoiced nature and less energy in lower frequency bands compared to ordinary speech.
In summary, Whisper Mode offers a practical solution for quiet interaction with Alexa, balancing usability and privacy without significant loss in voice recognition quality under optimal conditions.
Smart-home devices like Alexa, a popular gadget in the home-and-garden category, have integrated Whisper Mode, a technology-driven feature that enhances lifestyle. This feature, unique to Alexa, allows for quiet interaction with the device, particularly useful during late-night hours or around sleeping children.
