Alexa, Google, Siri: What are Your Pronouns? Gender and Anthropomorphism in the Design and Perception of Conversational Assistants

Understand

Technology companies have produced varied responses to concerns about the effects of the design of their conversational AI systems.

• Some have claimed that their voice assistants are in fact not gendered or human-like -- despite design features suggesting the contrary.
• We compare these claims to user perceptions by analysing the pronouns they use when referring to AI assistants.
• We also examine systems' responses and the extent to which they generate output which is gendered and anthropomorphic.