The Gendered Voices of Voice
Assistants
Sangeetha V,
PhD Research Scholar,
Institute of English,
University of Kerala,
Kerala, India.
Abstract: The advancements in
artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and neural networks have created
a paradigm shift in the inner consciousness of the humans across the world. The
man machine assemblage has obfuscated the boundaries between human and machine.
The gendered notions of the society are being replicated in the cyberspace as
well. This is conspicuous in the case of Google assistants or bots and the
first modern digital virtual assistant launched in 2011 initially, have taken
up an inevitable role in the daily lives of people. Google, Apple’s Siri,
Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana are some of the widespread voice
assistants. Female assistants and their voices are used by default which
reinforces gender bias in the cyber world. Many companies attempt to offer
multiple voices including those of celebrities, and popular characters, people
tend to use the voice of the female. These zeroes in the stereotyping role of
considering females in the servile position underpinning the patriarchal ideology
of female for service and male for authority. Gender neutral voice assistants
like Q which was launched in 2019 are still unpopular and was not widely
acknowledged into the public domain. This paper attempts to study the gendered
notions of voice assistants and how gender neutral assistants like Q try to
subvert the female voice assistants by adapting an all-inclusive
strategy.
Keywords: Consciousness,
Gender neutral, Voice assistants, Artificial intelligence, Cyberspace
Compared to earlier life,
humans rarely get a chance to live outside technology and today’s advanced
technological era gives hardly a human activity without technology. There has
been a cultural shift with the introduction of techno mediated activities and
women get opportunities in the digital space to record their opinions. This
allows them to construct their own spaces in technological phase narrating
their exclusive experiences and stories and taking their own freedom to indulge
in various activities. Gendered identities become contested terrains and what
it is to become man or woman is no longer defined by the biological determinism
but provides diverse ways of becoming. At one hand, gender is liberating in the
fast moving technological era, where virtual space offers a new platform to
move beyond the cultural and social relations and the conventional patterns of
gender roles. It connects women globally through web and provides opportunities
for women where their voices become heard and visible. The new biomedical
technologies offer bodily transformations where new models of profiling
individuals allow unprecedented ways of reconsidering what it means to be
human. World Wide Web provides equal grounding especially for women and the
marginalised where they actively engage with the technological phase
undermining the social constructs of society. The advancements in artificial
intelligence, genetic engineering and neural networks have created a paradigm
shift in the inner consciousness of the humans across the world. The posthuman
phase clearly delineates the shadowy lines among the humans, machine, animals
and the environment. The anthropocentric views are reconfigured in the
posthuman phase where humans are no longer considered as a monolithic entity
whose autonomous features have been glorified hitherto.
The corporate culture is created by men and
they dominate the technological phase creating programs according to their
ideologies. Technology has become ubiquitous in human life and according to
Donna Haraway we are in the process of becoming cyborgs (150). In the post
pandemic phase most of the people tend to use cyberspace more often for
official as well as entertainment purposes. This has become a necessity in
people’s lives as we are bombarded constantly with techno scientific
developments. There are many instances in the digital domain where technology
mirrors and replicates cultural as well as social implications of society. Even
though the liberation aspects persist, technology seems to be male dominated
and women consider the virtual or digital domain as possible spaces where they
can reconstruct their ideas and notions. It is quite evident that the society’s
patriarchal culture has been replicated in the cyberspace as well. Even in the
21st century with all these progressive thoughts and innovations we
cannot deny the fact that the patriarchal structure has been completely
expunged from the digital domains. The inherent philosophical patterns of male
domination are still followed across the world especially when women are always
considered as subversive.
This
deep rooted ideology is reflected in arts, popular culture, films and the
cultural terrains and throughout the ages feminists have fought for their space
and equal rights. The fourth wave feminism zeroed in the problems women face in
the internet, especially social media. Women got ample space to open up about
sensitive topics on their own through social media considering it as an
effective platform to share their experiences across the world. Without being judgmental
and even without revealing their original identity, hiding their physical
appearances, women can use these platforms to create their own discourses and
share their notions globally. Women writers too made use of the cyberspace to
pen their experiences and enrich their creativity. They wrote narratives
including characters of cyborgs and robots as tools which is constructed in
their imaginative liberated space. Cyborgs reject the rigid boundaries which
separates man from woman and human from machine. But there are evidences of
patriarchal framework in the cyberspace too. Let us consider the case of
Virtual Google Assistants, the first modern digital virtual assistant Apple’s
Siri was launched in 2011.Siri marked ground-breaking step in building personal
assistants allowing users to interact with them using natural voice language.
Siri is designed to assist humans in helping out in all possible ways by
performing various tasks like searching the internet, making calls, sending
messages, providing directions, and setting reminders and so on. Following
Siri, other major virtual assistants like Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa and
Microsoft’s Cortana followed and are popular among the public. These virtual
assistants use artificial intelligence and natural language processed to
understand and respond to user’s request, serving as invaluable tools in
everyday life. The specific duties of a voice assistant differ according to the
need and demand of the clients and institutions. Virtual assistants continue to
evolve and go through upgradations synthesising with smart home devices and
offering varying applications to support users across many years with
efficiency and convenience.
“The AI assistant
understands natural language voice commands and completes tasks for the user. Such
tasks historically performed by a personal assistant or secretary include
taking dictation, reading text or email messages aloud, looking up phone
numbers, scheduling, placing phone calls, playing songs and reminding the end
user about appointments”(“AI Assistant”). All these devices have female assistants by default
which reinforces gender bias in the cyber world. People consider the voice of
women more warm, soothing, and easy to trust too. Even though many companies
offer multiple voices including those of celebrities, and other characters,
people tend to follow the voice of the female. The justification regarding the
allegation is given by the companies is that women’s sound is more suitable for
voice production due to the increase in pitch. “The UNESCO had
released a report about “gender bias in the field of artificial intelligence,
arguing that voice assistants are inflaming gender stereotypes and teaching
sexism by creating a model of “docile and eager-to-please helpers,” programmed
to be submissive and accept verbal abuse” (UNESCO, I'd Blush If I Could).
AI can bring more
efficient, smarter and cost effective innovations in our daily work life. But
more inclusive AI bots are necessary to think from an alternative perspective
and for dismantling the stereotypical gendered positions of the society. “Because the speech of most voice assistants is
female, it sends a signal that women are available at the touch of a button or
with a blunt voice command like 'hey' or 'OK',” (UNESCO, I'd Blush If I Could).This feminization of digital labour replicates and
reiterates the gender stereotypes in social imaginary and expectations. These
female assistants are preprogrammed to be submissive and compliant accepting
verbal commands and abuse.
The Silicon Valley culture
and the male corporates create technology according to their own ideologies and
people who lead, aim at projecting gendered discourses in the digital space.
The female voice in these Google assistants maybe due to the fact that women
are always underrepresented in the technological industry. The society is
conditioned in a patriarchal pattern considering female voices as obedient or
more servile to make comfortable commands towards them. Many tones or commands
given by users won’t be addressed by the assistants and they become silent or
less responsive to yelling and abuse. This indeed gives a negative impact to
the future generations that women are supposed to take up verbal abuses
silently or women shouldn’t react to such abuses. Miriam Vogel, executive
director of Equal AI says, “We’re teaching our next generation to
double down on those stereotypes” (Giacobbe).
The names given to these devices also replicate feminine features.
Many girls have encountered relentless
bullying with the name Alexa in schools as they share their names with the AI
Alexa. The bullying involves peer students shouting and giving commands to the
girls, ostracization, and harassment like people do with the voice assistants.
As per many reports this has taken a toll in the mental health of girls leading
to change the names of some girls. Some parents have filed a complaint showing
that their daughter was bullied by her friends and ordered her tasks to do.
They have requested Amazon to consider changing the Google assistant’s name. So
it is evident that how children perceive aspects about these digital devices as
someone who obeys them at the same time remaining submissive. This issue
bothers worldwide and Amazon has expressed concerns over these families. These
incidents show unintended adverse effects in the social domains and experts say
more ethical consideration is needed in choosing AI names.
A group
of researchers, sound designers and linguists teamed up with the organisers of
Copenhagen Pride in 2019 in association with technology leaders. Equal AI
launched a unique, gender neutral voice assistant called Q or Quinn. They
recorded and collected several sample voices of people which include male,
female, transgender or nonbinary. “One of our big goals with Q was to
contribute to a global conversation about gender, and about gender and
technology and ethics, and how to be inclusive for people that identify in all
sorts of different ways," says Julie Carpenter, a professional in human
behaviour and emerging technologies who worked on developing Project
Q(npr.org). So this initiative is a huge shift in the field of cyberspace which
challenges the gendered stereotyping of voice assistants adapting an
all-inclusive strategy. Q subverts the idea of a gendered notion of society and
offers an alternate system that would surely help to wipe off the gender bias
which still exists in our society. They presume that more people in future
would opt for gender neutral assistants and this would become the future of
voice assistants. Project Q aims at developing and implementing androgynous
tone that users of all genders feel comfortable. This fosters a gender
inclusive strategy and takes a leap towards gender ethics and inclusivity in
the emerging technology.
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