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Siri and Her Girls: Why So Many Robot Helpers Are Ladies

theatlantic.com

21–22 of 22 posts

Re: Siri and Her Girls: Why So Many Robot Helpers Are Ladies

#21
I noticed this a few months ago, when I realized that my phone's Google navigation, all the GPS devices I'd ever used, and most of the text-to-speech I've heard in general, default to a female voice.

Why? I have no idea, but I doubt it's because we have this unconscious desire to "keep women in their place". Could it be rather that men are less likely to "argue" with a female voice than the perceived competition of a male voice? And that some women, in turn, might not like being ordered around by a man's voice while driving? Plus, as another poster mentioned, the higher register of a typical female voice may stand out better against the noise of the road, the engine, etc.

Of course, I could just be fooling myself--maybe subconsciously I just want to keep female voices in these kind of "support" positions. Who knows.

Re: Siri and Her Girls: Why So Many Robot Helpers Are Ladies

#22
Because VoiceOver (Apple’s screenreader) uses a female voice. At least if you pick US English as your language. You will get a male voice if you pick British English or French. (Siri uses the same voice as the screenreader. There is only one per language, unlike on the Mac where you can pick from different voices.)

What’s the underlying reason for Apple picking a female US English voice for VoiceOver? They probably bought the voice that whoever worked on it liked best and that also worked with the limited resources on the iOS devices.

The default voice for VoiceOver on the Mac is “Alex”, a male voice. It sounds much better than the iPhone’s voice, probably because a Mac can throw much more resources at voice synthesis. I bet the iPhone would use “Alex” as its US English voice if it had the chops to do so.

All the rest is the author’s silly imagination. Go ahead and ask Siri what sex it is.

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