These Popular Virtual Assistants (Finally) Offer Male Voices

These Popular Virtual Assistants (Finally) Offer Male Voices Up until recently, virtual assitants have almost entirely been female (read Apples Siri, Amazons Alexa, MicrosoftsCortana and Google Assistat). Thats largely because both men and women prefer the sound of female voices, as theyre perceived warmer and more relatablefemale voices make people receptive to voice-activated technology. Thats the scientific explanation, anyway. Of course, its also because society expects women to fulfill unterstellung assistant roles more so than men.In2016,The Atlantic contributor Adrienne LaFrance,wrote People are conditioned to expect women, not men, to be in administrative roles and that the makers of digital assistants are influenced by ansicht social expectations. In essence We seem to have an easier time telling female voices what to do than we do telling male voices what to do.Flash forward to2018, and were still having this conversation. Writing for PCMag, Chandra Steele said in January When performed by humans, these tasks havesociological and psychological consequences. So one might think that using an emotionless AI as a personal assistant would erase concerns about outdated gender stereotypes. But companies have repeatedly launched these products with female voices and, in some cases, names. But when we can only see a woman, even an artificial one, in that position, we enforce a harmful culture.Of course, tech giants producing these virtual assistants have refuted the sexism argument over the years theyve even gone so far as to tout their devices as feminist.Many consumers have accused tech firms of sexism, but firms that offer a virtual assistant have done research prior to settling on a female voice and name, wrote Stacy Liberatore for the DailyMail in 2017. Reportedly, anAmazon spokesperson told the DailyMail that the company had asked for customers opinionsby testing Alexas voice withlarge internal beta groups before launch ultimately, they chose the femal e voice Alexa has been given. The spokesperson reportedly described Alexa has exuding characteristics youd see in a strong female colleague, family member or friend she is highly intelligent, funny, well-read, empowering, supportive and kind. Shes even a self-identified feminist (ask her) and a proponent of human rights in general, the spokesperson told the DailyMail.Of course,achieving equal human rights only works when everyone, men and women are involved in those efforts. And some tech companies have started to realize the importance ofboasting male voice options.Apples Siri and the Google Assistant currently offer the option to switch to a male voice since 2013 and 2018, respectively. And now, Amazonhas finally followed suitand has addedalternative vocal options forits assistant. While the primary Alexa voice will remain unchanged, Amazon introducedeight new male and female voices on Wednesday, according to Tech Crunch,all of which developers can implement.Alexa debuted in 2014 , so its about time the company started offering male voices, as well barring the fact that it did used to take a while to create these voice personalities. Historically, recording a voice assistants audio was a lengthy process, as a voice actor would have to recite hours of words, lines and sounds, according to Slate. Now, the process takes just a fraction of the amount of time it used to, however. With new technologies in place, companies can usesmaller samples of recorded audio to generate a broad variety of human-soundingwords and phrases digitally.The vocal variety now offered by these companies minimizes thesubservient female assistant vibe, Slate contributor Christina Bonnington wrote about the additional options. And as these assistants are increasingly being adopted inhouseholds with children, bossing around not just a female-voiced assistant seems like a healthy step in teaching gender equality and eliminating traditional gender role expectations.The variety in voices is certainly a welcome addition to our virtual assistants.--AnnaMarie Houlis is a multimedia journalist and an adventure aficionado with a keen cultural curiosity and an affinity for solotravel. Shes an editor by day and a travel blogger at HerReport.org by night.