Alex mispronouncing words since updating to IOS 17

I haven't exprienced any of these mispronunciations yet, but I'll start trying to pay closer attention. Honestly, I'm too distracted by Samantha almost constantly taking over from Alex, but that discussion is on a different thread, as is the discussion regarding the inability to delete Alex. Anyway, I will be following this thread now, and will let you know if I discover any pronunciation quirks.

I'm not using Alex on iOS, so I can't speak to that.

But on the Mac, regardless of voice, the pronunciation of wifi varies depending on a couple of factors. If it's not hyphenated, the syllables always rhyme with why. If it's hyphenated, the syllables rhyme with why if reading a line at a time, and rhyme with wee if navigating by word. I've never understood why the pronunciation should change depending on reading or navigation method. But it's an issue that has been around for years and is common to all voices on the Mac that I've tried.

I've noticed the we fee thing.

Perhaps offer them a wee fee for doing so?

So, I have yet to update to 17, since AppleVis forums are recently flooded with issues about it, I am glad I waited. Having said that, I have a laundry list of words in VO's Pronunciation library on my iPhone as well as my MacBook, so that issues like this do not happen too often.

As @PaulMartz mentioned above, the VO voices tend to have their default pronunciation libraries altered with each new version release.

HTH. 😅

Apple need to retire him and let another voice take over. Alex needs a brake and vacation. Somewhere far far away.

Alex is still my favorite voice, but the way he's constantly crashing now... I'd switch to something else, but since Alex can't be deleted off of my phone for some unfathemable reason, I feel as though I may as well keep using him since he's taking up space. So far, I still haven't heard any mispronunciations, but I'll try to be on the listen for the wifi thing. I wonder if there was an Alex update that my phone didn't get because of his somewhat broken status. I hate the idea of completely erasing my phone and starting over from scratch, but it may eventually come to that.

Maybe if you change voice and continue to use it, Alex could be deleted with time. I no longer have him in my iPhone. Did not care how him was not able to say Vorail. Instead he spell the word.

Hi,
I just tested both of the items you mentioned on my iPhone 13 pro max, running iOS 17.0.1 & don't notice Alex mispronouncing either of the words you gave as examples in your post.

It certainly can't hurt to actually comit to another voice for a few weeks and see if it'll let me delete Alex after that. Then again, for the most part, he's still my favorite voice. He just seems a lot more crashy and unstable than he's ever been in the past, and I don't think another voice would be taken over by Samantha. It's worth a try anyway. *smile*

The words you used as examples were pronounced by Alex exactly the way they should. I have a 13 mini, if that helps. However, for the last year, he's been pronouncing the word nice like the French city when read in a sentence, but when typing it out he said it correctly, and I can't think of a way to force-correct because everything I've tried has been a disaster. I happen to like Alex so hope he's around for a long time, but something needs to be done. BTW, just to be ornery and show me up or something, he pronounced nice correctly as I was editing this response.

I like this voice, American Siri Voice 4. I replaced Alex with Norah mainly because despite adjusting the inflections, he sounds too robotic when sentences end with a period. It seems like the same pitch is used and does not vary like it has done before Apple did whatever they did to the voice.

Denise used Alex and has experienced the same thing with the voices crashing. She has moved on to American Siri Voice 1. She seems to like that voice.

What can I say. Is time for a separation trial for both of you. Like the crazy people say in Redder leave him.

I'm using a 13 pro max, and have not noticed Alex switching to Samantha. Here are some other words Alex and many others won't pronounce correctly. adventure. politics. grande. purposes. Eloquence also won't say micro correctly. It's been a problem since beta one, and am seriously hoping it gets fixed soon.

Hi everyone. for Alex saying adventure, i used to be kind of annoyed. Now i kind of understand. If you speak the word out loud, you don't hear to much of a difference. I think we were so used to how it pronounced things, we got used to how it's been said for years. i will say though that politics needs to change. TheNice thing I can understand but again, I know the context it messes up in. The word Grande, again, we say it like that, so apple's just changing the inflection. Yes a little weird but I get used to it I guess. I do hope they rewrite alex as they really barely do anything with the voice and it was the very first and only one really that got so much attention when it was released. As I keep saying, apple gives up on their hard work and would rather shell out proffits so they can have outsourced and older technology keep up with the times so they can say, yes, that language is supported without really taking credit for it. Shiny new devices every year it is folks.

Can we have Alex from OS X Snow Leopard back?
Please and thanks... 😅

I think I started on snow leopard, the white plstic Mac books. I don't remember how good it was back then. I'm gettin old!!

I'm older than you, but probably not by much. 😇
My first Mac experience, at least post-blindness, was also one of the old "white" MacBook's that still had the HDD and optical drive. Heavy beast it was, and was running Snow Leopard. I just remember my experience being a lot more fluent than today's VoiceOver Alex and/or MacOS. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I finally heard the mispronunciation of wifi this morning. It only happened when navigating by word, though. I agree that Snow Leopard Alex was the best. It would be awesome to get him back. As for the alex/Samantha thing, I made a screen recording of it, but am not sure how to share it with Apple, or even on this forum for those who haven't experienced it. At least on my 256 GB iPhone 13 pro, the problem seems to be getting worse. It's never happened on my watch, but it's starting to happen with my Apple TV boxes. I'm just hoping that whatever is making Alex so unstable gets fixed sooner rather than later.

Via iPhone:
1. Place the recording in your Files directory.
2. double tap and hold, or use the Action menu (flick up and down) to access the "Share" option.
3. In the popup, flick right until you hit the first button, likely labeled "Send Copy button".
4. Double tap this, and then double tap on "Collaborate button".
5. Flick right and double tap on "Only invited people can edit, forward, button".
6. Change the settings to "Anyone with a link" and "View only".
7. Flick left until you find the "Done" button (or you can tap once near the top of your display with 4 fingers to jump to the Done button immediately).
8. Finally back in the "Share" menu, flick right until you find a "Invite with link button", double tap this.
9. Finally, the link is auto copied to your clipboard, so just paste it here, there, or anywhere to share with others.

HTH (and sorry I don't know a simpler way) 😅

Apple accessibility and I have been emailing back and forth about the alex issues. Tsent me the diagnostic app to send them logs as well.

I think we all need to take a step back and give Alex and Samantha a little breathing room.
After all, AI need love, too! 🥰

Alex need to retire. All the name calling he needs to retire or vacation. Using Tom and no issues. 13 pro that I got last Nov.

I'm glad you're making progress in working with Apple Accessibility. I don't know what's going on, but none of the people I've spoken with on the phone seem inclined to actually help; they just keep having me perform the same trouble-shooting steps over and over again. I would be happy to do the diagnostics thing with them, but have no clue how to get that ball rolling. Maybe I should try email instead of calling? I wouldn't mind the Alex/Samantha thing quite as much if my iPhone 13 pro didn't become so slow and sluggish when Samantha takes over. It's border-line unuseable until Alex comes back. I know I could very easily switch to a new voice and go on with life, but i refuse to do that if I can't delete Alex. Maybe it's petty and stupid, but he is taking up so much space that I don't like the idea of him just sitting there in my phone's storage space doing absolutely nothing. Anyway, please keep us posted on anything you find out. I'd just put Alex in the roter, but I discovered that doing that seems to disable automatic language detection, which wouldn't be an issue, but I've been playing around with the duo lingo app, and it's helpful for VO to switch to Spanish as needed.