Theres no shortage of articles lately about how the pandemic has set women back.
We even see this reflected in the emerging field of AI voice assistants all of which sound female.
Alexa, why do you sound like a girl?
Alexa, Siri, Cortana theyre the latest in a long line of voice assistants that have sounded female.
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And with the pressure of time on them their go-to-market product was left as solely female.
But why were their past TTS systems trained on biased data in the first place?
And why do we seem to care how our phones speak?
Shrill, passive, whiny…
These three words are commonly used to describe the voices of female speakers.
They arent exactly flattering!
Theres evidence that using a female voice actually improves user experience.
In summary: people prefer a female voice but only when it is robotic.
So my voice assistants a girl so what?
The problem with voice assistants isnt just that they all sound female.
Its the passive personalities that have been designed for them.
Imagine this: youre a woman walking down the street, minding her own business.
Suddenly, a man drives by and yells out the car window, Youre hot!
This is obviously unacceptable behavior, and reacting to it would probably mean raising a specific finger.
What a well-behaved bot she is!
Weve seen some progress, but theres more work to do
Its not all bad news.
Since the UNESCO report was published, Alexa has declared shes a feminist.
The worlds first gender-neutral voice assistant, Q, is being developed to address the issue.
If we all work together, we can make AI that works for everyone.
