Disney Character Voices

The voice assistant (or choice of character) is not a Sonos decision. Sonos licenses the service from Amazon and Google who decide what Sonos is allowed to access (or incorporate into their devices).

Ok just thought it might be something they could work out with Disney!  Thanks for the response! 

“They” would have to be either Amazon or Google, unfortunately, not Sonos. All Sonos does is provide a conduit to the servers of those two companies :)

On the other hand, Sonos did by a voice processing company a year or so ago, so it’s entirely possible that if/when they ever release their own voice command system, they could indeed work with Disney.

One mild caveat here….I used to work for Disney, and the amount of legal shenanigans I had to go through in order to get licenses to use their work (voices/music) were absolutely challenging. And some were impossible, for various reasons. 

@Airgetlam 

Geeze….who haven’t you worked for 😂

Heh. Lots of folks. :)  

But I’ve worked for both Sony and Disney, both pretty large corporations, so it’s not really saying much. Everyone wants to be in the gaming space. 

Well one never knows of what the future brings! Just thought it would be something different that would allow folks to be creative with there Sonos One or other units! Being Over The Top is great! Just have to see what happens, at least I got someone's attention on my thought! :-)

I thought Amazon announced that they were rolling out Disney voices in ‘22 back in September with the rest of their useless crap that no one needs (like the terminator robot dog). 
 

Update: guess it’s just at Disney, oh well. 
 

https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/amazon-and-disney-introduce-hey-disney-magical-voice-assistant

Your link actually says that it will be at Disney AND available as a skill.  By the looks of it though, it doesn’t look like you’ll be able to switch the Alexa voice entirely.  It just means that it will be skill that, when invoked, will allow to interact with disney voices and trivia and such.  It will even allow you to set timers and such within the skill.  However, you won’t be able to select music, control your smart home, or ask the general questions you would normally ask of Alexa.  This isn’t terribly surprising as I would bet takes a lot of time and money to do a set of voice recording for everything Alexa could say and in different tones to make a naturally sounding voice….for different Disney character voices.  One day perhaps.

In regards to Sonos, I would bet “Hey Disney” won’t work, but you might be able open the skill naturally with “Alexa, open the Hey Disney skill” or similar and be able to use it that way.  If/when Sonos develops their own voice assistant, seems extremely unlikely it will have a Disney character voice right off the bat.  Besides the enormous expense, Disney already has the deal with Amazon, and working with Sonos would not be good for that relationship.  And….Sonos voice assistant is rumored to be locally based rather than in the cloud.  A lot harder to have lots of voice options when limited to a single device.  And Sonos isn’t marketing to kids the way Amazon does.  If they did a guest voice, it would make more sense to use musicians, maybe some of the ones they already use on Sonos Radio.

I believe you both are correct it was just a thought! I kind of thought it would be could instead of talking to Alexa you could talk to Olaf, Elsa, Goofy, Micky, Minnie, or even more characters but I doubt it will ever come to be, I try to think positive but I know how these companies are! Thanks Anyways it was a shot in the dark I guess.

Never hurts to think about these things. Reality sometimes gets in the way, but nothing is ultimately impossible, it just takes effort of varying degrees (blatantly false, as a male, I can’t bear a child, but you get the thought….)