The Ugly Truth Why AI Bots Are Mostly Female (and Why It Does Matter)
New technologies reflect age-old biases
Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant.
You know what these AI voice assistants we use daily have in common?
(Besides being pretty bad at understanding what songs we want to hear.)
Well, they are all set to female voices by default. And three out of four also have gendered names.
Although following backlash, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google were quick to add male-sounding voices to their assistants, they were all female when they were released on the market.
But the feminisation of AI and text-to-speech systems isn’t limited only to the assistants in our phones, laptops and speakers.
If you call your bank, use GPS for instructions, or use self-checkout machines at the supermarket, chances are you’ll hear a synthesised version of a woman answering you, polite and deferential, pleasant no matter the tone or topic.
Most humanoid robots that appear in exhibitions and media are also all built to sound and look like a woman. From the robot called Sophia, which first triggered the ‘uncanny valley effect’ in 2016, to the ‘world’s most advanced’ robot Ameca developed by the UK in 2021.
