Using female voices for AI assistants injures females, UN report states

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Digital voice assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant have, by default, a female voice. A brand-new report from the United Nations states that’s an issue. 

These default voices enhance the stereotype of females being “obliging, docile and eager-to-please helpers” that are “available at the touch of a button or with a blunt voice command like ‘hey’ or ‘OK,'” according to the UNESCO report, launched Friday.

The smart-home gizmos, which are frequently described as “she” or “her,” have no option however to react. Digital assistants likewise can’t prevent abuse, which enhances the concept that females are “subservient and tolerant of poor treatment,” the UN report stated. 

While Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana provide male voices, the defaults for the digital assistants are female voices. Amazon’s Alexa provides a number of accents, however all its voices are female. Google states that it’s established a range of 10 voice offerings in the United States which when clients establish a Google Home gadget, they have a 50-50 possibility of getting either a generally female-sounding voice or a generally male-sounding voice.

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“Siri’s ‘female’ obsequiousness — and the servility expressed by so many other digital assistants projected as young women — provides a powerful illustration of gender biases coded into technology products, pervasive in the technology sector and apparent in digital skills education,” reads the report. It’s titled “I’d blush if I could,” which used to be Siri’s response to being called a bitch. Apple in April updated Siri’s response to “I don’t know how to respond to that,” according to the report. 

The trouble, the UN report says, is that women are often left out of the technology field. Though girls may start their lives interested in tech, the numbers drop significantly by the time they reach high school. There are fewer women in the room to help develop products like digital voice assistants and prevent potentially sexist decisions. And that can cause the gender gap in tech to widen, according to the report, which discusses ways to close the gender divide in digital skills.

Amazon and Apple didn’t respond to requests for comment. Microsoft didn’t have a comment.

Originally published May 22, 10:27 a.m. PT.
Update, 12:18 p.m.: Adds info on Google’s voice assistant; includes “no comment” from Microsoft.

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