Siri · Cortana · Google Assistant · Alexa etc. Why are all voice assistants "female"?

With "sound assistant" each company developing, mainly by Siri, you can operate it by talking to a smartphone, speakers, and so on. It is expected that operation of equipment by speech recognition will become mainstream in the future, but why is the female voice adopted as the mainstream voice assistant such as Siri · Cortana · Google Assistant · Alexa Of? That is summarized in the Wall Street Journal.

Alexa, Siri, Cortana: The Problem With All-Female Digital Assistants - WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/articles/alexa-siri-cortana-the-problem-with-all-female-digital-assistants-1487709068

Four audio assistants named Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant, and Alexa were presented, but basically female voices have been set for each. Siri can change the voice of male and female from the settings, but Japanese Siri has female voice set by default. The other three voice assistants are fixed to female voice and can not be changed to male voice by setting etc. It is the gender of the voice assistant who seems to be biased from the viewpoint of gender equality, but the reason why each company chooses female voice is simple, because female voice is more acceptable for men and women and warmth I know that.


In a study conducted by Professor Carl McDerman of Indiana University in 2008, when male and female groups heard a mixed voice of male and female, both groups answered that "women's voice feels warmer" It is. Amazon and Microsoft are also seen to adopt female voice as a voice assistant because the result that the synthesized voice is favored by female voice regardless of sex in market research and in-house testing .

Does social desirability bias favor humans? Explicit-implicit evaluations of synthesized speech support a new HCI model of impression management
(PDF file)http://macdorman.com/kfm/writings/pubs/Mitchell2010DoesSocialDesirabilityBiasFavorHumans.pdf

However, not all robots are suitable for female speech, but in Stanford's research about 20 years ago, male synthesized speech is suitable for computer teachers and female synthesized speech is related to love and human relations I know that it is suitable for teaching. Professor Mac Dorman, who continues his research on the robot's voice, said, "Device developers are faced with ethical puzzles, instead of emphasizing the stereotype of female voice, We should continue the challenge to be neutral. "

Acquired AI voice assistant company "Viv" who developed SiriSamsung did the trademark registration as "Kestra" "Bixby". Though not officially announced, these trademarks are expected to be used as proprietary voice assistant for Samsung's next high-end smartphone "Galaxy S8", and it is expected that male and female voice can be selected.

Although the female synthesized speech has a reasonable advantage, the Wall Street Journal suggests that "each company's voice assistant should be able to change both male and female users by gender equality" I will.

ByTimothy Neesam