An Interview with Alexa
Does Alexa have a Canadian voice-over doppelganger, eh? It all depends on the eh, eh?
In my last newsletter, Alexa’s Voice, I reported the avowed, but not confirmed, evidence within Brad Stone’s book, Amazon Unbound, that Alexa’s voice belongs to the Colorado-based voice actress Nina Rolle. Confronted by Amazon’s stonewalling, Stone resourcefully trolled sources in the voice-acting community to identify Rolle. After publishing the post (which, I admit, trended perilously toward puff) it occurred to me I was guilty of some newer form of flunkey journalism by failing to interview the voice embedded in the device her-(it/they)-self.
Me: “Alexa who are you?”
Alexa: “I am Alexa.”*
*NOTE: I attempted to insert an audio file of my interview with Alexa into the post but ran into a technical issue related to permissions** (conspiracy theories are welcome). Of course you are invited to duplicate this line of interrogation with your own device—and please share your results!
**Special thanks to my cousin, Michael Thomas Ferens, for beta testing this!
Of course she’s Alexa, so let’s try this Again.
Me: “Alexa, who is Nina Rolle?”
Alexa: “According to Wikipedia, Nikolina Kamenova Dobreva, known professionally as Nina Dobrev, is a Canadian actress. Her first acting role was as Mia Jones in the CTV drama series Degrassi: The Next Generation. She later became known for portraying Elena Gilbert and Katherine Pierce on the CW Television Network’s supernatural drama series, The Vampire Diaries.”
Nikolina Kamenova Dobreva? What the …. ? Perhaps I mumbled or slurred my words?
Me: “Alexa, who is NINA ROLLE?”
Alexa: “According to Wikipedia, Nikolina Kamenova Dobreva, known professionally as Nina Dobrev, is a Canadian actress. Her first acting role was as Mia Jones in the CTV drama series Degrassi: The Next Generation. She later became know for portraying Elena Gilbert and Katherine Pierce on the CW Television Network’s supernatural drama series, The Vampire Diaries.”
Okay, this is weird. Alexa herself, the very voice of lucidity and trustworthiness, has had her memory cleansed of a name, not only intimately associated with her creation, but, of a real person and professional voice actress living in Colorado? What was this—The digital gulag?
I had an idea.
Me: “Alexa, who is NINA ROLLE, R-O-L-L-E?”
Alexa: “Here’s something I found on the Web, according to (garbled, perhaps ‘imdb.com’), Nina Rolle, a Boulder, Colorado-based actress and singer, has been revealed as the voice of Alexa in a new book.”
Me: “What book?”
Alexa: awkward SILENCE
Oh the tangled web we weave. I noticed that Alexa pronounced Ms. Rolle’s name slightly different, more like “Rawl” instead of “role”. Could this ostensibly account for Alexa recognizing the name once I spelled it? I checked the web and sure enough, Ms. Rolle has a Facebook post flagging the correct pronunciation of her name. When I opened the page to hear it, however, I got the message “this video has no sound.”
Over the course of the next 24 hours, I repeated my query to Alexa dozens of times, (using slight variations in pronunciation), discovering, in the process, that all previous attributions, including the ones for Nina Dobrev, as well as the one for the real Nina Rolle in “a new book,” had been purged.
Instead I got this:
Me: “Alexa, who is Nina Rolle?”
Alexa: “Nina Rolle is a notable person who is known for (the movies) Downfall, What to do in Case of a Fire, Love Scenes from Planet Earth, and Straight Shooter.
WTF! Seriously?
In the full cast credits on IMDB for all these German movies I found a “Nina Roll” listed as a dialog, sound or dubbing editor. Close enough occupation, but her Instagram photos bore no resemblance to the photo’s on Ms. Rolle’s website, or in this 45-minute interview of Rolle posted on YouTube in 2020 (in which the topic of Amazon is never mentioned). It was during this interview I encountered yet another twist in the pronunciation of her name, ala Francaise, “Roll-eh,” or “Roll-aaa”
Okay, once more unto the breach, dear readers.
Me: “Alexa, who is Nina ‘Roll-eh’”
Alexa: “According to an Amazon source, Nina Rolle is a North American voice actress, storyteller and singer. You are listening to her voice right now.”
Tabarnac!
I’m not sure I buy the validity of the run-around on the search results I got from this voice in the cloud. Surely, Alexa is intelligent enough to distinguish between a slight accent difference in her real mother’s name, and Nikolina Kamenova Dobreva. But it’s in the gray areas of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and self interest, that Amazon, and all IT companies, live and compete.
The programmed scenario I experienced is probable and beyond our capacity to understand, much less to validate: In the still-evolving world of voice-activated computing, we may not need to know directions, math, science or history, but we will be told to go sit in the corner for improperly enunciated vowels, schwas and diphthongs. Deal with it!
In this online publishing autobahn, I take detours responsibly. While I digress, I never divert, usually finding my way back to the main thread of alluded to topics and themes, as embodied by the A Word logo. As always, thank you for reading, and please, share.