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Now you can choose how fast Alexa talks on your Amazon Echo

Now you can choose how fast Alexa talks on your Amazon Echo

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There are seven speeds

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Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Amazon is launching a new ability for it’s Alexa smart assistant today: the ability to choose how fast it talks. By saying “Alexa, speak slower” or “Alexa, speak faster,” you can, well, get Alexa to speak slower or faster. Amazon says there will be seven different speeds for Alexa, two slower than the default and four that are faster. You can also say “Alexa, speak at your default rate.”

Amazon is touting the feature as something that helps with accessibility, and that certainly is a possible benefit. In the press release, Sarah Caplener, the head of Alexa for Everyone, is quoted as saying the slower speeds are for “hard of hearing and older customers” while the faster speeds are a boon to “customers who are blind or low vision,” because they “are used to consuming audio content and want to be able to listen more quickly.” Amazon has been working to make Alexa more accessible on several fronts over the past year.

The faster speeds might also just be a nicer user experience for everybody, as sometimes waiting for Alexa to get through a piece of information or confirmation of your request just takes longer than doing it yourself on your phone. Amazon is already ahead of its competitors in terms of making Alexa a little less verbose. Last year, it gave users “Brief mode,” which allowed Alexa confirm certain smart home commands just by responding with a chime — something the Google Home is just beginning to do now.

Amazonsaysthefeatureislaunchingtoday.