If you’ve heard about the voice on Amazon’s Echo smart speaker, you may be wondering who the person behind the voice is. There’s a lot of speculation about who is behind Alexa, but the reality isn’t as complicated as it might sound. In fact, the voice belongs to a Boulder, Colorado-based voice actress named Nina Rolle. Rolle’s resume includes work for companies including HBO, Microsoft, and Sony.
Amazon’s Alexa has a female voice that works with both Google and Siri. Its voice was recorded by a real person and analyzed algorithmically. However, Amazon has never revealed who the woman behind the voice is. One author and journalist, Brad Stone, has claimed that the real voice of Alexa is Nina Rolle. She is an announcer and lives in Boulder, Colorado. The voiceover artist said that the work of Nina Rolle was “perfect” for Alexa.
While Amazon has kept the source of Alexa’s voice a secret, she learned about the voice while speaking with other people in the voiceover community. Although recording for a digital assistant may sound awful, Rolle didn’t seem to mind it. She even has her own website with a voice that sounds similar to that of Alexa. And although her voice does sound similar to Alexa, it doesn’t have the range and nuances of a real voice.
As a side note, Stone’s account of her role in the creation of Alexa isn’t confirmed by Amazon, which may be a good thing for users of the Amazon Echo and its Alexa internet device. Amazon isn’t likely to confirm or deny this information since they don’t want it to draw attention to themselves or Alexa. However, if Stone is correct, we might have to ask another question: what do people think about the voice of Alexa?
