WHO IS AMAZON POLLY?

Almost everyone knows Amazon Alexa, but do you know Amazon Polly?

According to Amazon, “Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech, allowing you to create applications that talk, and build entirely new categories of speech-enabled products. Polly’s Text-to-Speech (TTS) service uses advanced deep learning technologies to synthesize natural sounding human speech. With dozens of lifelike voices across a broad set of languages, you can build speech-enabled applications that work in many different countries.”

Many applications currently use Amazon Polly, some of which you may know. If you have tried to learn a new language with the popular app, Duolingo, you have encountered Amazon Polly. Duolingo offers courses for 38 different languages to over 300 million registered users. With a current valuation of 1.5 billion USD, Duolingo has built an empire on the Amazon Polly service that transcribes written content and then generates AI voice audio for the app. Duolingo also employs an additional Amazon service called Lex. Lex is essentially Polly in reverse. Lex translates native speech from the user into text, allowing Duolingo’s software to verify if the learner has executed the lesson properly.

So, what can this technology do for your business? If you currently have a WordPress website from your business, you are not far from reaping some of the Polly service benefits. AWS (Amazon Web Services) and WP-Engine collaborated to create an Amazon Polly plugin for WordPress in 2018. With WordPress now powering 35% (and growing) of websites globally, integrating deep speech learning technology into the world wide web seemed like a natural step. Businesses can use this technology to create audio versions of their website content. Audio content is a fantastic offering for visually impaired users, as well as readers on the go. You can even integrate your Polly content with popular podcast providers, like iTunes, and syndicate an entirely AI voiced podcast with your written content.

Additionally, Polly can translate your content for a nominal fee through AWS translation services. Your written and audio content will then be available in one of the 29 languages available with the Polly service. This allows you to offer yet another way to make your content more accessible worldwide.

To start your WordPress and Polly integration, you will need the AWS plugin for WordPress and an AWS account. If you do not host your website on AWS, you can authenticate your AWS account in the plugin. Once your account is connected, you can easily configure your website to process your text into audio or translate your content. You can view an example of Polly in action on this post. If you like to get really nerdy (we sure do), then you can watch the video above on Amazon Polly presented by Amazon Educate.

We’d love to know if you give this a try on your website. If you are interested in setting up AWS and Polly on your site and need help, your team at Woodchuck Arts is ready to help – just contact us!

See More Blog Posts

GET IN TOUCH

The incredible thing about the internet is that we can work anywhere! Woodchuck Arts is geo-located in Newark, Ohio.

Email Heather at heather@woodchuckarts.com or call 724-281-0559