Obsession With "Female" Digital Servants Needs To Change

MIRTBelGeran said:
Over the Top Sarcasm...
Just by noticing the gender at all you pigs show your bias. There is no male or female, only bags of flesh with an identity crisis.

Over the Top Serious...
As a culture most of the world has an issue objectifying the human person (not just women) and making people objects to be used. This is true in all aspects of life. As a culture the world needs to start dealing with issues regarding defining human dignity both male and female in a non-relativistic way that embraces the natural duality of our existence. Different but equal and complementary in nature.
I'm not saying that men must only one way and women another. Simply that we not use each other as tools. A piece of electronics on the other hand is a tool.

Lets be real...
I use my phone with text to speech all the time because I have a 1.5hr. commute and choose to have books read to me. I've tried multiple voices male and female. I choose the female toned voice as I find it more pleasant and simpler to understand. I could care less about any social connotations and I have "Zero" feelings of sexuality towards my phone's reading voice. This is some 5th grade BS.
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Well, call me a pig then (yes, I know this was your sarcastic section :D ) I prefer the company of females too. I'd rather hang out with my wife and her friends than most of my own friends. I'd rather look at them, talk to them, listen to them, party with them. I'd rather hear a female voice on my phone, I play female characters in fighting games, etc. etc. There are both practical and personal preferential reasons for all of this. Call me a swine, but I prefer that to whatever these fucktards complaining about all this are...

Humans are attracted to and respond to other humans based on personal preference, aesthetic, environment, proximity, commonality, etc. The sooner people get used to this the better. Just because you prefer one over another, or are even attracted to one over the other, does not mean you're being disrespectful, or objectifying. (at least to the extent that it should be offensive) I say again, Ugh...

Or maybe I have this all wrong, and nature is backwards. Someone needs to go tell all those flashy male birds to tone it down. They're being objectified and USED for sex by those plain female birds. It disgusts me. I wonder which sex birds prefer on their mobile devices. My guess is male.

I treat everyone with respect, but I'm still very clear about who/what I prefer to hear or look at.
 
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Steve said:
At first, I checked to make sure this wasn't an April Fools Day joke but the article is dated today. Are we now so politically correct that people are condemning the use of female voices for digital services?

Alexa, Tay, Siri, Cortana, Xiaoice, and Google Now. These technologies all have one thing in common - they are digital servants aimed at a mass-market audience that feature a "female" voice or persona. Am I the only one that thinks that this more than a little creepy?
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I think you missed the point of the article. He's simply equating that because of the statistical male dominated tech industry there is a implied bias slant toward programmers creating "female" persona interactive assistants. And that's all. He doesn't take any position on sexism or objectification of women and he backs up his stance with numbers.

I can't say he's wrong because he does have a point. Though I'm not sure how someone would go about changing that male slant other than evening the programmer field by getting more women into tech.
 
Tweak42 said:
I think you missed the point of the article. He's simply equating that because of the statistical male dominated tech industry there is a implied bias slant toward programmers creating "female" persona interactive assistants. And that's all. He doesn't take any position on sexism or objectification of women and he backs up his stance with numbers.

I can't say he's wrong because he does have a point. Though I'm not sure how someone would go about changing that male slant other than evening the programmer field by getting more women into tech.
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Of course that's also under the assumption that the bias exists simply because of the number of male programmers, and that women wouldn't be biased toward the same thing.
 
ZDNet is a troll/shill haven. I stopped reading stuff there years ago, their editor pushes these crappy articles so the writers in turn write the crap lol...
 
I find the male EBS voice grating and offensive!! (emergency broadcast system) I think the whole emergency broadcast business has been structured to keep female voices out, and this should change right away.

Actually, not that you'd really care if you died shortly after, but beforehand, let's all think about what it would be like for the current EBS voice to be the last thing you heard before dying.

Yuck...
 
J3RK said:
I find the male EBS voice grating and offensive!! (emergency broadcast system) I think the whole emergency broadcast business has been structured to keep female voices out, and this should change right away.

Actually, not that you'd really care if you died shortly after, but beforehand, let's all think about what it would be like for the current EBS voice to be the last thing you heard before dying.

Yuck...
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Maybe they need a range of voices: High end is "make my ears bleed" and uses Jennifer Tilly, middle is somewhere around the Siri level, down to a low setting with Lauren Bacall/Mae West. For male they can range from Pee Wee Herman at the "bleeding ears" level down to Morgan Freeman at the low. :)
 
kbrickley said:
Maybe they need a range of voices: High end is "make my ears bleed" and uses Jennifer Tilly, middle is somewhere around the Siri level, down to a low setting with Lauren Bacall/Mae West. For male they can range from Pee Wee Herman at the "bleeding ears" level down to Morgan Freeman at the low. :)
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:D hehehe... It'll probably happen. Or the FCC will start selling voice packs. :D (if that's who runs the EBS...)
 
svet-am said:
In a similar vein, I read an article that leveraged industry data from Garmin and TomTom that said the psychologically both men and women respond positively and with trust to "caucasian" female voices. Thus, this is why all of their GPS default to this type of voice.

My point is that I don't think anyone just randomly decided to use female voices. I think there is a fair amount of science behind it.
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This!

It was scientifically proven over and over again that both men and women respond better to a female voice. This is also the reason most aural warning systems are female.

The author is just attempting to gain BS praise from the SJW and internet feminist communities with that shit article.

I bet his phone uses a female voice.
 
Insula Gilliganis said:
From "The Making of Star Trek", written by Stephen E Whitfield, and Gene Roddenberry (first published 1968, ISBN 1-85286-363-3, in the "Part II, An Official Biography of a Ship and its Crew", Chapter 2, page 152 it says:

It [the computer] uses a feminine voice, a familiar occurrence, even today. The pre-take-off system on today's F-105 Fighter, for example, speak to the pilots in a female voice because it has been discovered that the feminine voice penetrates noise better and results in improved response by men (and women).​
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and any old school radio amateur will tell you that a YL (female) voice drives an amplitude modulated signal harder than an OM one
 
Booyaah said:
ZDNet is a troll/shill haven. I stopped reading stuff there years ago, their editor pushes these crappy articles so the writers in turn write the crap lol...
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^^ This!

It's just clickbait. They are the National Enquirer of tech imho.
 
female voice is generally easier to hear over crappy and/or low-level speakers
 
Armenius said:
I remember reading something some time back that a female voice activates the same areas of the male brain that react to music. Meaning a female voice is naturally more pleasant to listen to. Keep in mind this has nothing to do with what is actually being said, of course.
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Hm, that's weird. I find the female news casters (anchor, weather lady and the traffic lady) voices much more annoying then the male news casters. The traffic lady is particularly annoying (even my wifey says so!). I usually hit the mute button when they come on.
 
sadsteve said:
Hm, that's weird. I find the female news casters (anchor, weather lady and the traffic lady) voices much more annoying then the male news casters. The traffic lady is particularly annoying (even my wifey says so!). I usually hit the mute button when they come on.
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Actually I'm with you on the vocal-coached news-twits. I mean, they all suck, but wwwwaahtching asian-reporter triiisha takanahhhhwa speak like some generic robot is just asinine. Very unnatural, very unappealing, but I guess it agitates the least amount of closed-minded idiots...
 
I finally had time to read this article and it all really is summed up at the end.

Not only is diversity essential, but it's important that these digital assistants can cater for the needs of all users, and not be an unconscious reflection of the wants, needs, and desires of their creators.
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This is the only part of the entire article that matters.

Someone is worried that digital assistants will only be developed to help men and not women. And that somehow women need their digital assistance to help them with things that are different then what men need.

That is all it boils down to.
 
MacLeod said:
What a complete waste of bandwidth this rant is. Has life become so easy and so good that all we have left to be upset about is this? Jesus, no wonder these hipsters need safe zones on college campuses. What a bunch of pussies. Can't just be that a female voice is softer and more pleasant to listen to than some gravelly male voice. Noooooo, it has to be something much more sinister.
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I'd like to know more about this.
 
These shitbloggers have learned that they need to find a SJW angle to absolutely everything and write about it in order to stay relevant.

If these voices were male they'd be writing about how women aren't being represented.
 
MacLeod said:
What a complete waste of bandwidth this rant is. Has life become so easy and so good that all we have left to be upset about is this? Jesus, no wonder these hipsters need safe zones on college campuses..
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I would applaud, but I think we are supposed to use "jazz hands" now.... Students swap clapping for jazz hands at NUS event

I agree, people are just looking for things to be outraged about these days.
 
Darunion said:
I changed siri to the male voice and found his directions to make sense and accuracy improved.
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Thats because according to polls, Male Siri earns 25% more than his female AI counterpart :D

I suspect guys like to listen to girls and vice versa (for the straight population), so having both options is good for tools and applications. You can probably just use software to analyze the voice of the human speaker and match the "sex" of the automated voice based on crowd sourced decision matrix and eventually nail it 99% of the time. But for a narrative? Artistic license should take precedence over political correctness. The best fiction is explicitly "uncorrect" both politically, and socially.

I also recall reading the article on "Bitchin' Betty', she sounds like an angry mom yelling at you for misbehaving with all the psychological impact that entails, it would be stupid if that were changed just based on equality basis.
 
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sadsteve said:
Hm, that's weird. I find the female news casters (anchor, weather lady and the traffic lady) voices much more annoying then the male news casters. The traffic lady is particularly annoying (even my wifey says so!). I usually hit the mute button when they come on.
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For myself, I would have to wonder if I just don't want to hear a woman tell me how to get someplace. Just saying.
 
lcpiper said:
For myself, I would have to wonder if I just don't want to hear a woman tell me how to get someplace. Just saying.
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Microaggression alert!

Quick! Someone get on twitter and summon the Trust and Safety Council!
 
Well at least this dude wrote the article and ZD footed the bill for his white knighting. If Anita had to do it there would have needed to be at minimum $50,000.00 raised on kickstarter.
 
YES, ban females from doing voiceover work. Then bitch about the non existent pay gap.
 
dgz said:
I'd like to know more about this.
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Tweak42 said:
I think you missed the point of the article. He's simply equating that because of the statistical male dominated tech industry there is a implied bias slant toward programmers creating "female" persona interactive assistants. And that's all. He doesn't take any position on sexism or objectification of women and he backs up his stance with numbers.
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He was implying that it's the slant of programmers to come up with the male fantasy female persona.

It took Apple more than four years to fix Siri's responses to questions about abortion services, and yet the company didn't seem to have any problem programming Siri to search for prostitutes and Viagra.
...
In the words of freelance journalist Amanda Marcotte, "Siri behaves much like a retrograde male fantasy of the ever-compliant secretary: discreet, understanding, willing to roll with any demand a man might come up with, teasingly accepting of dirty jokes."
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Just because you say you're not going to discuss sexism does not mean you're not discussing sexism, especially when it's heavily inferred. And yes, the male to female ratio might be facts, but they're also heavily slanted facts towards his spin. The author is a SJW douchebag, and that's all there is to it.
 
Cr4ckm0nk3y said:
This!

It was scientifically proven over and over again that both men and women respond better to a female voice. This is also the reason most aural warning systems are female.

The author is just attempting to gain BS praise from the SJW and internet feminist communities with that shit article.

I bet his phone uses a female voice.
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Yep, which is why the military uses female voices.
 
pgdeaner said:
For us apple users, it's Settings>General>Siri>SiriVoice

My wife sets hers to a British male voice. She's a Downton Abbey fan.....

<edit>

Oh and I forgot to say, the author is obviously an idiot and the article is nothing more than poorly researched clickbait.
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lol my ex g/f did the same thing. Although her motivation was jealousy haha (not completely serious obviously). She referred to Siri as a "trifling bitch" lol and changed hers to the guys voice
 
Well if it was all male voices we would be reading about it as to why is this and how discriminatory it is.
 
Insinuating that this has something to do with subjugating women is just nonsense.

The reason is that people are biased, but not in the way this woman thinks. People are biased against males for many things.

Male voices can come across as threatening to many. Men obviously prefer female voices, but women do to, as they find them non-threatening.

This is why when automated phone systems actually do use male voices they are recorded in such a way that they bend over backwards to sound as affable and harmless as possible.

I believe very strongly that men and women are equal in value, and should be treated equally by the law, in pay, and in every other significant way. I reject patently - however - that we are exactly the same. In most cases our skill sets overlap, but on average each gender has physical and mental differences that lend themselves better to certain tasks, and we are fools if we as a society reject this and fail to let each do what they do best.

Women tend to be better than men at striking conciliatory tones, and being empathetic, and because of this people tend to respond better to female voices in customer service type roles (essentially when you are trying to deescalate a situation)

This doesn't mean that there aren't men who also are good at this. It is a spectrum and we all fall in different places on it, but we are playing to the law of averages, and on average, while both genders are of equal value each have their things they tend to be slightly better at.

There is nothing wrong with this.
 
lcpiper said:
I finally had time to read this article and it all really is summed up at the end.



This is the only part of the entire article that matters.

Someone is worried that digital assistants will only be developed to help men and not women. And that somehow women need their digital assistance to help them with things that are different then what men need.

That is all it boils down to.
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That's a noble sentiment, and I'm not arguing that there shouldn't be a variety of solutions.

I will say though, that the dev is actually free to develop however they like. If they want to code something that caters to their own desires, they are totally free to do that. It may limit their market somewhat, but there's technically no reason they can't. Anyone else is free to code an assistant that caters to them. Whether or not what I said is actually a responsible approach for large corporations is another thing entirely. :D
 
Clickbait.

Back when Siri was new to people, there were articles that explain that the goal was to have a voice that most people find pleasant. Thus, why Siri is Male some areas, and Cortana in China has a animated face.
 
Merc1138 said:
Well when we can get James Earl Jones and Samuel L. Jackson, and possibly Morgan Freeman to do the voice work, we might have some male voices people will want to hear.

Of course then people will just be outraged that the voices are "black" :rolleyes:
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A lot of those deep, black voices are very soothing. Just like a lot of women's voices. Just calming and relaxed.

They can reach out and get more angry (Samuel L Jackson - excellent example!). But, they can really put out a great voice when needed. The generic white male? It's business casual. Not real soothing. Even some of those 'relaxation' tapes or whatever with the white person, it just sounds monotone school teachery.

I like women's voices (except when they are whining, bitching, moaning, complaining, screaming, yelling...).
 
Speaking of good black men's voices, we need a good Scatman Crothers voice. That'll cheer anyone up. (I can just hear him listing off all the things in the Overlook Hotel kitchen in my head right now...) Hmm... Maybe I have "the shine" to me... :D

Which reminds me. I think I know what this type of person's problem is. They ain't regaler. "Ya gotta stay regaler if ya gonna be happy!"


Edit: This post has caused a big chain reaction in me now...

We also need voice packs for Tony "the little boy that lives in my mouth", Jack Torrence, and Wendy Torrence. That would most definitely make me a happy camper!
 
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J3RK said:
Shodan though, I'm not sure if the actor is still doing this type of thing. I'm hoping they get her for SS3. :D
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I seem to recall reading something stating that she would be returning to do the voice of Shodan in SS3
 
Draconian said:
I seem to recall reading something stating that she would be returning to do the voice of Shodan in SS3
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That is good news indeed! Maybe she can squeeze in a voice pack for mobile devices in the meantime. :D

Oh, but wait, that would fullfill a fantasy or desire for me, which is obviously a BAD thing. :p Female AI voices only exist to pander to white males...


hehehe
 
I want a Deb of Night or Gimble voice. Either would be AMAZING!
 
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