Critics say female voices of Siri, Alexa and friends reinforce unwanted stereotypes
FILE - In this Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2016, file photo, Google Home, right, sits on display near a Pixel phone following a product event, in San Francisco. Apple's Siri can prattle off the height of celebrities at the drop of a hat. Amazon's Alexa can order a fresh batch of toilet paper to your door. Google's Assistant can help tune your guitar, while Microsoft's Cortana does impressions on request.
But all of these artificially intelligent aides will answer in a woman's voice, at least according to their default settings for Canadian users. "It absolutely reinforces stereotypes, but it's reinforcing those stereotypes based on research done on what we respond well to," said Wallis. Representatives for Amazon and Google did not respond to email inquiries about how gender factored into product development, while an Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.
While Alexa and Cortana only offer female voices, male options were added to Assistant and Siri after their initial rollouts. For some languages and dialects, Siri's voice defaults to male, including Arabic, British English and French.
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