Do Chatbots have a Gender Issue?

My first experience with Alexa was during a Hackathon we held at Jacada. We built a bot that could create branches for our development environment. It was fun. We created all the necessary integrations, defined the intents and then connected everything with Alexa and our Bot Framework solution.

Some of the time Alexa understood us perfectly, sometimes not.

We thought of Alexa as a woman. We laughed at her when she didn’t understand us correctly and we encouraged her when she did what we wanted.

Then it hit me, I was thinking about all the Personal Assistant solutions out there: Siri by Apple, Cortana by Microsoft, and Kate by Genesys — each of these Personal Assistant or Virtual Agent solutions have been characterized as a woman.

It was a surprising revelation for me. This got me thinking, why are all the Personal Assistants women?

Stuck in the past?

If we look back at the modern world 60 years ago, most women did not leave the home to go off to work. If they did work, they were usually secretaries, or in other words: Personal Assistants.

So now, following the feminist revolution, women are supposed to be taking a massive, leading role in the work force. However, the world’s most innovative companies are still characterizing us — the women — as Personal Assistants.

Some of you may say, “But look at Watson! Watson is a guy.” Yes, Watson is a guy, but he is not a Personal Assistant. Watson was initially created by IBM to win the Jeopardy TV game. Since he needed to be “smart” he got a man’s name (and not just any man, a wise man). So here too, women needed to be quiet and do what they are told, while the men were being smart.

I wish that the Tech industry, which leads the world in innovation, will start leading not only in technology but also in the way we perceive human kind. I’d like to see the next big Personal Assistant product with the name John or Bob or Tom.

As a Product Manager, I think we have a responsibility not only to lead and create new innovative products, but also to impact the way that these products are being branded and presented to the market.