You may never have thought about it, but why are all digital assistants female?
There’s Siri from Apple, Alexa from Amazon Echo, and Cortana from Microsoft — all artificial, but all decidedly female, with female names and female voices. Google has just updated its OK Google voice to be more human — and (you guessed it!) also more female. The there’s GPS voices, ‘leave a voice mail’ voices and even Rosie the Maid in The Jetsons.
Oh, and the Telstra woman who puts us on hold.
Most examples of artificial intelligence or digital assistants are female. It’s the one “power” place where women dominate (well, they do tell us what to do and know practically everything there is to know about the world, or at least where your Tinder app has disappeared to).
Is it down to Darwin’s Law?
Some researchers, like Clifford Nass of Stanford University (now deceased) have put it down to evolution.
“It’s much easier to find a female voice that everyone likes than a male voice that everyone likes,” Nass told CNN. “It’s a well-established phenomenon that the human brain is developed to like female voices.”
After all, Nass continued, foetus’ have been shown to respond to their mother’s voice while in the womb, but not their fathers.
Female voices are also more complex than male voices, and — according to research by University of Sheffield — the melodic nature of female voices means they’re processed differently in the brain.
The Sheffield study found the auditory section of a man’s brain is activated when he hears a female voice. When he hears a male voice on the other hand, which is simpler in tone and pitch, the processing is done towards the back of the brain.