AWS Polly (Amazon Polly) is a cloud service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that converts text into lifelike speech. It utilizes advanced deep learning technologies to synthesize human-like speech from written text. With Polly, you can add speech capabilities to applications, products, and services to enhance user experiences and accessibility.

Here are some key features and capabilities of Amazon Polly:

1. Text-to-Speech (TTS): Amazon Polly enables you to convert text into natural-sounding speech in multiple languages and voices. It supports a wide range of voices, including male and female voices with different accents and speech styles.

2. Neural Text-to-Speech (NTTS): Polly offers Neural TTS, which leverages deep learning techniques to generate high-quality, expressive speech. Neural TTS produces more natural and human-like speech compared to traditional TTS methods.

3. Speech Markers: Polly allows you to generate speech with embedded speech markers. These markers provide additional information about the synthesized speech, such as phonetic and timing information. They can be used for fine-grained control and synchronization with multimedia elements.

4. Lexicons and Pronunciation Control: You can create custom lexicons with Polly to modify the pronunciation of specific words or phrases. This enables you to control the pronunciation of domain-specific terms or uncommon words.

5. SSML Support: Amazon Polly supports Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML), a markup language that allows you to control aspects of speech synthesis, such as pronunciation, volume, pitch, and more. SSML provides fine-grained control over the synthesized speech output.

6. Integration and Accessibility: Polly seamlessly integrates with various AWS services and developer tools. You can use the AWS Management Console, APIs, SDKs, or AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) to interact with Polly. It can be easily integrated into applications, websites, chatbots, voice assistants, and other products to make them accessible to users through speech.

7. Pricing: Amazon Polly pricing is based on the number of characters converted into speech. It provides a free tier for the first 5 million characters per month, and beyond that, pricing varies depending on the region and usage volume. You can refer to the AWS Pricing page or the Amazon Polly documentation for specific pricing details.

Amazon Polly is commonly used for applications such as voice interfaces, interactive voice response (IVR) systems, audiobook narration, language learning platforms, and accessibility features in applications. It offers developers and businesses a powerful and scalable solution for adding text-to-speech capabilities to their applications and services.