Why are the majority of AI assistants female?

Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, M3ghan (2022) and Amanda from Her (2013). 

Alongside other technologies that include a voice assistant, these four all have two things in common: A feminine voice, and being referred to as a “she” and “her.”

Although the type of voice can now be changed through settings, Google’s AI and the voices within its technology also feature that of a woman. The earliest GPS models had a female-robotic voice as well, including the voice of “The GPS Girl” Karen Jacobsen, who was also the voice of Siri.

Which raises the question: Why are the majority of AI assistants female?

“It’s what resonates with consumers,” said Meghan Joyce, CEO and cofounder of Duckbill. “But someone has to break that cycle. Someone needs to take a different stance and find a way to help people feel supported in a way that isn’t simply reminding you of your mother.”

However, there are biological and historical reasons behind this tendency. The human brain is hardwired to prefer female voices, and this preference can begin as early as in the womb.

Historically, women worked as secretaries, educators and communicators. When telephones were invented, women worked as their operators, which likely made people accustomed to a disembodied assistant with a female voice. During WWII within the U.S., women gave directions to pilots because their voices stood out when compared to a male’s.

“If you look at NIH research over the past century,” she said, “It skews toward types of cancer that are more commonly found in men than women. For many, many years, the majority of NIH research grant writing, grant funding was being done by men.”

Even the smallest changes in technology would reinforce established gender stereotypes, she argued. While referencing the book More Work for Mother by Ruth Schwartz Cowan, she brought up the example of the modern stove, which eliminated the requirement of bringing in firewood as its heat source (generally a man’s job). 

“But it didn’t change the work that the stereotypical women in the family needed to do of sitting in front of the heat and cooking the food,” she continued. “And even that small thing allowed men to really evolve their lives and their focus and their time.”

When it came to naming Duckbill, an AI- and human-powered personal assistant, Joyce said a number of “gendered” names were considered, such as Hera and Harriet.

“Slapping a name and a tone of voice on there, you could imagine, would be a very natural thing,” she added. “We even considered gender-neutral names, and ultimately decided that we wanted someone that didn’t summon either gender.”

Both Joyce and other cofounder Emi Gonzalez were inspired by the bill of a duck. Joyce described the bill as a duck’s “sixth sense,” helping it eat, identify threats, defend itself and communicate.

“That is why we ultimately named the company Duckbill,” she mentioned, “Because we really wanted to ensure that this was a tool that anybody felt comfortable using; that didn’t perpetuate some kind of gender norm that we didn’t think needed to exist in this ‘future AI world.’” 

Just like any other technological innovation, Joyce said she believes AI will have a big impact on society in terms of gendered stereotypes.

“Every time there has been a technological revolution, humanity goes through a paradigm shift where behaviors change in more of a step-change function,” she said. “I think there’s a moment here to take advantage of that and not simply assume that we have to do things just because that’s the way we’ve always done them.”

She added that the end goal with developing technologies, including Duckbill’s personal assistant, is to “not only improve humanity’s minds, but also turn some of these old stereotypes on their head and deliver a product that is unprecedentedly reliable.

“The decisions we make now around what these products will be named, how these products are built, who’s doing the building, who’s funding them,” she listed, “All of those will have an impact on how the technology is built and how it either reinforces or changes culture on the other side of its proliferation.”