Siri’s voice is that of an American male on my phone. Why dump Siri when it can be any persona you choose, male or female?

Great points, though I am hesitant (absent disability or injury) to have one of these in my home. Why invite more invasion of privacy than already exists?

I had the thought that the voice of Jervis from ironman would be a good voice for a digital assistant. I think I saw a documentary piece about how the companies did a study about what voice was more acceptable.

Don't worry. I'm sure there will be a male beefcake version available as well to facilitate you ladies fantasies as the technology progresses. You can bet the makers of Siri and Alexa aren't going to let that cash cow slip by the wayside, so unfair treatment based upon gender shouldn't be an issue.

There was a story a while back (I think on NPR) that suggested young children believed Alexa was a real woman, and when asked about specifics (where she lives, etc) the children would make up answers and completely believe them. There was also so suggestion that children would become more and more disrespectful to Alexa as she would not "discipline" them for treating her that way, and that the bratty behavior would later transfer to adults.

It seems to be a more dysfunctional version of using a tv as a babysitter.

I only have Siri on my phone and I have HIM programmed with a sexy Aussie accent. (He's basically useless, however, except for wake up alarms. His answer to most requests is along the lines of 'I don't know'.

I talk to Siri because she’s the only woman in my life. ?? but no seriously the only thing I ever ask her for is to set an alarm, timer when I’m cookin or do some quick math. I don’t want an Alexa because I’m not dumb enough to voluntarily wiretap my house, and I don’t have the money for it to be useful in restocking supplies from amazon. I stop by dollar general because that’s often the only way I’d speak to another human outside of work in the course of most days.

I agree that most men don’t give women enough credit. We expect too much service n hand holding from them, but there are also evolutionary reasons that women often adopt these roles: you’re generally better at giving a shit than we are. I think female voice assistants are mostly because female voices are more pleasant to listen to for both genders. Men perk up when they hear a woman and women, like you said with your GPS, easily get annoyed at men dictating to them.

There are a lot of productive fights against sexism to be taken up in Silicon Valley and all over right now; I think this one is a little silly given that most of these devices already have the option for either gender. What would make it more pleasing? Having it randomized whether the default setting on each device was male or female? shrug I can’t think of a way that it matters much. Legal and ethical issues of how we treat AI is an interesting issue though, and one that’ll get more complex in the near future.

You can change Siri's voice to male, but not Alexa.......

The computer on Star Trek had a female voice too. Boycott Trek!!!!

I think female voices are used in such devices for the simple reason of them sounding more pleasant. I could be wrong, but I don’t think it’s any more sinister than that.

I don't want a "connected" home because it's easily hackable by thieves.

Don't want a digital assistant. It makes people lazy.

I'm using Alexa for a while and never thought of it like that. I have a choice of a few names so I use the name Echo for the second one, for no particular reason. But I believe the article's premise because I keep getting the feeling that every time law progresses social justice, the behaviour it's trying to improve gets channeled in a different way, sometimes underground.

This is dumb. Alexa is an electronically-generated voice. She tells me the weather, turns my lights on and off, plays music, tells me when my orders have arrived...

I have never wanted that stuff in my house to begin with.
Just more tech for someone else to hack, and cause me trouble.
I don't need the aggravation.
Besides, it's just another gadget that makes people lazy.

There could be a psychological reason to use female automated voices instead of male voices when dealing with men. I seem to remember that airlines use female voices for automatic warnings ("pull-up, pull-up", etc.) because they found that men would not respond as quickly to male voices. So, before we get our collective under-grundies in a bunch, we should perhaps do a little more study of the issue.

So, those things don't let you choose the gender of the voice you have to listen to? Hard to believe the marketing groups didn't see that one.

I am %110 for equality of the sexes. Women deserve to be treated with all the respect, dignity and love possible and I would take on anyone who seeks to degrade or demean someone based on their sex.
This however is complete "slap in the face politics" that demean the women that fought and fight against actual, real world inequality issues.
This is an attempt to make an issue out of a non issue which in turn belittles actually issues.
This is a great example of modern feminism vs true feminism.