Comment by mises
6 years ago
There's a lot of people saying that alexa is a girl because it's perceived as more helpful. But have we thought about the fact that maybe it's perceived as more nice or as less threatening? There's a reason movie villains are stereotypically male voice actors - deeper male voices sound less friendly, forget helpful.
Is that natural instinct or societal training? If we start using non-female voices for voice assistants, maybe we can train people that a voice doesn't have to be female to be helpful. Otherwise if we use female voices because society is just used to it, then we're just reinforcing an unnecessary stereotype for convenience.
Forget helpful, maybe it's more kind? I don't know if it's "societal training" or not, but it's not our job, nor is it that of a company, to try to "train people". Deliberately introducing something that makes your customers uncomfortable is not a responsible action for a company to take upon the part of its shareholders.
These gender stereotypes are the reason why this voice exists.
i'm pretty sure it's because hollywood has been conditioning us to hear flat affect male robot voices as sinister for 50 years