Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana are some of today’s most well-known virtual assistants. All are female, and all elicit an image of an assistant who is not just a woman, but a woman people can boss around, flirt with, and act inappropriately toward. Compound that with portrayals in the media and it all starts to feel… Read More »
The growing high-tech field of conversational computing is popularized by intelligent virtual assistants like Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa, and the Google Assistant. Interestingly, all of them use a young female voice. Because it has social and emotional dimensions not seen with keyboards and screens, conversational computing is holding a mirror to many of society’s biggest preconceptions… Read More »