"Technology companies often choose to gender technology believing it will make people more comfortable adopting it.
Unfortunately this reinforces a binary perception of gender, and perpetuates stereotypes that many have fought hard to progress.
As society continues to break down the gender binary, recognising those who neither identify as male nor female, the technology we create should follow.
Q is an example of what we hope the future holds; a future of ideas, inclusion, positions and diverse representation in technology."
If technology is needed to create this kind of voice -- IE it's not really natural, and as others have suggested it creates an uncanny valley of voice that confuses people, wouldn't that actually perpetuate the idea that there is a gender binary?
(I don't have a dog in this fight, I just don't see that this accomplishes what you want it to)
Yes. You find contradictions all through this kind of belief system if you analyse it logically, because it's driven first and foremost by how people feel (or how people think others might feel).
> stereotypes that many have fought hard to progress
What stereotypes would this help to alleviate?
> the technology we create should follow.
Why it's a service that communications via artificial audio. Why is it important that you can't have a male or a female voice? People still exist, the voices in question don't have a physical appearance.
Though I don't feel strongly either way, my guess is that, since people usually leave software on defaults and female voices are typically chosen for voice assistants, the stereotype might be of women being servants.
> As society continues to break down the gender binary, recognising those who neither identify as male nor female, the technology we create should follow.
People who neither identify as male nor female AND want to listen to a gender-neutral voice seems like a very niche market.
it is an interesting idea. technology of course has no gender, and any synthesized speech can only express an arbitrary simulation of gender, so making this explicit reveals the underlying reality that all technological simulations of gender are by definition constructed. a piece of art that demonstrates the construction of gender probably will not catch on well as a product though.
I instantly recognized the voice as M2F, before it even confirmed that by the description of how it was created. If I had a device with this voice, I would feel a strong urge to reenact the final printer scene from the movie Office Space.
Companies want their voice-enabled products to be purchased. Revulsion doesn't help.
And silly, too. Regardless of what is going on inside a person's head (which we can choose to respect, absolutely), biologically there is definitely just two genders. You can identify however you like, modify if you wish, but in the end your body will be one or the other, right along with your voice.
Gender is not a biological concept, period; that's sex. Your body is also distinctly not "one or the other", given that a large portion of the world is born with one of several intersex conditions.
> A computer assistant doesn't have a gender so why should it represent itself as male or female
A human has to be in the recording booth to create the vocal library. Also you can change the Siri voice to not only be Male, but also have a different accent.
> A human has to be in the recording booth to create the vocal library.
do they? i mean, we're not great at synthesizing natural-sounding voices yet, but that's a technical challenge – not something inherent to the problem.
Maybe you shouldn't. Maybe the people who do care about it can go about creating solutions to their real or perceived problem(s), and maybe the can be okay.
It seems possible, from my perspective, there is enough motivation to go around to work on multiple issues at once.
While climate change, over-fishing, land degradation, certainly could do with more attention, gender issues represent a fairly immediate threat for some people in some places at some times.
I find synthetic voices, vocaloid and virtual actors (like “virtual” youtubers) to be interesting in that they when replacing something usually performed by a human, they often do it in way lower quality due to technical limitations.
So it theory here should be a lower appeal to it, but on the other hand there’s a ton of side effects and “disruptive” uses that make the technology useful for a population different from what was intended.
From the top of my head this “neutral” voice could be nice for phone guidance or voice translation, where the awkwardness of the voice could be an advantage. But I wouldn’t be surprised if a bumber of people came forward to declare this the thing they’ve been waiting for years.
The page asserts that audio content to many listeners is firstly "defined" (though perhaps "subconsciously emotionally engaged with to some extent" would be more accurate) by perceived gender, before semantics. The notion is that by adding a genderless/neutral voice, this would be removed. Of course, you then need to discard genders in names as well, hence 'Q'. It's pretty forward thinking... I don't doubt assistant tech may go this way. However, wouldn't "dehumanization by association" for non gender identifying individuals be a risk if that popularizes? A nice thought-provoking art project, if nothing else.
"Technology companies often choose to gender technology believing it will make people more comfortable adopting it.
Unfortunately this reinforces a binary perception of gender, and perpetuates stereotypes that many have fought hard to progress.
As society continues to break down the gender binary, recognising those who neither identify as male nor female, the technology we create should follow.
Q is an example of what we hope the future holds; a future of ideas, inclusion, positions and diverse representation in technology."
If technology is needed to create this kind of voice -- IE it's not really natural, and as others have suggested it creates an uncanny valley of voice that confuses people, wouldn't that actually perpetuate the idea that there is a gender binary?
(I don't have a dog in this fight, I just don't see that this accomplishes what you want it to)
Yes. You find contradictions all through this kind of belief system if you analyse it logically, because it's driven first and foremost by how people feel (or how people think others might feel).
2 replies →
> stereotypes that many have fought hard to progress
What stereotypes would this help to alleviate?
> the technology we create should follow.
Why it's a service that communications via artificial audio. Why is it important that you can't have a male or a female voice? People still exist, the voices in question don't have a physical appearance.
> What stereotypes would this help to alleviate?
Though I don't feel strongly either way, my guess is that, since people usually leave software on defaults and female voices are typically chosen for voice assistants, the stereotype might be of women being servants.
6 replies →
> As society continues to break down the gender binary, recognising those who neither identify as male nor female, the technology we create should follow.
People who neither identify as male nor female AND want to listen to a gender-neutral voice seems like a very niche market.
Society still views gender as binary.
it is an interesting idea. technology of course has no gender, and any synthesized speech can only express an arbitrary simulation of gender, so making this explicit reveals the underlying reality that all technological simulations of gender are by definition constructed. a piece of art that demonstrates the construction of gender probably will not catch on well as a product though.
I instantly recognized the voice as M2F, before it even confirmed that by the description of how it was created. If I had a device with this voice, I would feel a strong urge to reenact the final printer scene from the movie Office Space.
Companies want their voice-enabled products to be purchased. Revulsion doesn't help.
Am I the only person who thinks that the text above is some elaborate kind of trolling?
This sounds incredibly sad and dystopian.
And silly, too. Regardless of what is going on inside a person's head (which we can choose to respect, absolutely), biologically there is definitely just two genders. You can identify however you like, modify if you wish, but in the end your body will be one or the other, right along with your voice.
Gender is not a biological concept, period; that's sex. Your body is also distinctly not "one or the other", given that a large portion of the world is born with one of several intersex conditions.
6 replies →
Ahh, so delusion
I find it artistically interesting. A computer assistant doesn't have a gender so why should it represent itself as male or female?
I find something offputting that so many agents pick a female voice (e.g. Alexa, Siri)
> A computer assistant doesn't have a gender so why should it represent itself as male or female
A human has to be in the recording booth to create the vocal library. Also you can change the Siri voice to not only be Male, but also have a different accent.
> A human has to be in the recording booth to create the vocal library.
do they? i mean, we're not great at synthesizing natural-sounding voices yet, but that's a technical challenge – not something inherent to the problem.
1 reply →
I find something offputting that so many agents pick a female voice (e.g. Alexa, Siri)
Its research based, not merely "sexism":
https://www.cnn.com/2011/10/21/tech/innovation/female-comput...
OP didn't say it was sexism, they said it was offputting.
1 reply →
> A computer assistant doesn't have a gender so why should it represent itself as male or female?
One could argue that a computer assistant should have a human-like voice and an overwhelming majority of humans have distinctly male or female voices.
Best attempt at a judgement-free guess: some people don't like the bimodal manifestation of gender and would like to not be reminded of it.
The number of people in this category would be small right? Why should I spend time to worry about it?
Maybe you shouldn't. Maybe the people who do care about it can go about creating solutions to their real or perceived problem(s), and maybe the can be okay.
It seems possible, from my perspective, there is enough motivation to go around to work on multiple issues at once.
While climate change, over-fishing, land degradation, certainly could do with more attention, gender issues represent a fairly immediate threat for some people in some places at some times.
1 reply →
With these kind of things, we don’t really know.
I find synthetic voices, vocaloid and virtual actors (like “virtual” youtubers) to be interesting in that they when replacing something usually performed by a human, they often do it in way lower quality due to technical limitations.
So it theory here should be a lower appeal to it, but on the other hand there’s a ton of side effects and “disruptive” uses that make the technology useful for a population different from what was intended.
From the top of my head this “neutral” voice could be nice for phone guidance or voice translation, where the awkwardness of the voice could be an advantage. But I wouldn’t be surprised if a bumber of people came forward to declare this the thing they’ve been waiting for years.
Uh oh, wrongthink detected.
Is there any market signal that this is the case?
Maybe we should try to figure out why our society is producing people with this rejection of basic biology rather than ignore the problem
The page asserts that audio content to many listeners is firstly "defined" (though perhaps "subconsciously emotionally engaged with to some extent" would be more accurate) by perceived gender, before semantics. The notion is that by adding a genderless/neutral voice, this would be removed. Of course, you then need to discard genders in names as well, hence 'Q'. It's pretty forward thinking... I don't doubt assistant tech may go this way. However, wouldn't "dehumanization by association" for non gender identifying individuals be a risk if that popularizes? A nice thought-provoking art project, if nothing else.