Amazon Polly Plugin Leverages AWS’s Artificial Intelligence Services to Expand Voice Experiences for Users
AUSTIN, Texas — Feb. 8, 2018 — WP Engine, the leading WordPress digital experience platform, today announced its collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to launch the Amazon Polly plugin, which transforms text into lifelike speech. With the assistance of the Amazon Polly plugin, publishers can turn their written content into podcasts to reach consumers on the go.
Available in the WP Engine Solution Center, the Amazon Polly plugin is an open source integration for AWS’s text-to-speech functionality with WordPress, the most popular content management system which powers 29 percent of the web. The Amazon Polly plugin integrates effortlessly — enabling content creators to easily add text-to-speech capabilities to any written content. With millions of voice-driven devices being shipped every year, brands need to think about building new voice-driven experiences for users. Plus, with more voice-enabled searches, brands need to build audio content that works in emerging channels such as inline audio players and podcast mobile applications.
The Amazon Polly plugin leverages AWS’s artificial intelligence (AI) services, bringing the power of AWS’s natural text-to-speech technology to content on WordPress. With Amazon Polly, publishers can create podcasts available on iTunes based on the site’s WordPress taxonomy including author and category, creating targeted streams to reach audiences interested in specific topics.
Particularly as younger generations shift to accessing content and the web through voice commands, the need for technology to meet their increasing demands continues to rise. A national study commissioned by WP Engine and conducted by The Center for Generational Kinetics, found 70% of consumers (aged 14-59) believe that we will interact with the Internet by voice or movements rather than keyboard or mice within the five years.
Comments on the news:
“Publishers, whether it’s a news site, blog or a brand that publishes content, have to meet audiences where they are– across devices, across media,” said Mary Ellen Dugan, Chief Marketing Officer at WP Engine. “The Amazon Polly plugin for WordPress, tested and optimized on the WP Engine Digital Experience Platform, is a tremendous opportunity for customers to capture their audience’s attention when it’s convenient for them to take a moment to consume content – waiting in line, on the train, or grabbing a bite.”
“Amazon Polly allows developers to convert text to lifelike speech, using the same technology that powers Amazon Alexa,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, Vice President of Machine Learning at Amazon Web Services, Inc. “With its natural, lifelike voices and a wide selection of languages, we are excited to have Amazon Polly be the voice for WordPress and provide an alternative way for customers to consume their WordPress content and meet the needs of a larger audience.”
“Our readers are digesting news and stories through their mobile and voice-driven devices more and more,” said Johannes Boege, Chief Product Officer at POLITICO in Europe. “This is a great opportunity for us along with our agency 10up to test the distribution of our content with voice technology. We are excited to use Amazon Polly to reach more people in new ways.”
Since launching Amazon Polly, POLITICO in Europe has published two new daily podcasts with the content from their daily political newsletters Brussels Playbook and London Playbook. Additionally, the Playbooks now include an inline player which turns the briefings into lifelike speech directly on the site.
For more information, visit https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/amazon-polly-gives-wordpress-a-voice/.
About WP Engine
WP Engine is the world’s leading WordPress digital experience platform that gives companies of all sizes the agility, performance, intelligence, and integrations they need to drive their business forward faster. WP Engine’s combination of tech innovation and an award-winning team of WordPress experts are trusted by over 75,000 companies across 130 countries to provide counsel and support, helping brands create world-class digital experiences. Founded in 2010, WP Engine is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and has offices in San Francisco, California; San Antonio, Texas; London, England; Limerick, Ireland, and Brisbane, Australia.
About POLITICO
POLITICO is a global nonpartisan politics and policy news organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C. In April 2015, a European edition of the publication launched through a joint venture with the leading digital publisher in Europe, Axel Springer.
This is amazing! the complete set up was super easy! Thanks WPengine!
Amazon Polly might be great for some uses, but *nobody* will listen to a podcast made that way, so never mind that idea! Podcasts aren’t just dumps of audio text content; the human beings, their spontaneity and interactions with each other are much of the reason anybody listens at all.
This interesting, and I hope they continue to improve on the voices (better inflections, less mechanical sounding). What types of metrics do you get with this, like number of plays, how long they’re played, 25/50/75%, etc.?
Hello Thomas,
Thank you for your question. Out-of-the-box, Amazon Polly does not come with metrics. However, if you upload the audio to iTunes, there are iTunes analytics tools that are available.
This looks interesting. As Patty commented, I don’t think this is truly ready for “podcasting” but I see it as a great option to create audio versions of your blog posts. Today’s consumer is always on-the-go, and rarely has time to sit and read a blog post. But having an audio version opens up new opportunities to grow and audio-based audience.
My question is how much does this actually cost? Looking at Amazon’s pricing structure they charge by the request, and characters per request. So does that mean once you publish a blog post it will “request” the conversion, and the cost is based on the number of characters? But once the audio file has been generated, there is not an additional charge for each website visitor to listen? And if you aren’t using S3 to store the files, I’m guessing they are automatically downloaded and stored on your server?
Hi Trevor,
Good question! Amazon Polly is priced at $4.00 per 1 million characters for speech or Speech Marks requests (when outside the free tier). The Amazon Polly free tier includes 5 million characters per month for speech or Speech Marks requests, for the first 12 months, starting from your first request for speech. Listening is 100% free.
Hope this helps!
This is a great plugin. One problem, it reads all of WPBakery Page Builder (formerly Visual Composer) code. So if you create a post using the massively popular WPBakery Page Builder, it gets all weird. Maybe reach out to them http://bit.ly/2toVnrm to get this fixed.
Hi Peter,
Excellent point! In an upcoming release, we’re going to add a lot of “filters” so sites and plugin authors can make changes to what gets read as needed.