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Comment by Pfhreak | Hacker News Reader

Someday, someone will buck the trend of naming their voice assistant with a woman's name. Sadly, today is not that day.

Also, don't use a common male/female name for a voice assistant the same way you don't use a common name for a dog. You don't want to be calling your assistant or pet and some nearby person looks up.

PS: If you have a grudge against your neighbor, you could use their first name for your dog >:)

I agree, in fact, I think our AI deserve far less regard than pets or even our least favorite being (spiders and molds and such).

I want to call my voice assistant robot "Assistant" or just say "Computer", like in Star Trek.

To be fair, Siri is androgynous enough and could be given a man's voice by default.

I gave Siri a male voice right out of the bag, and keep forgetting other people have female Siris. Having Butler Siri feels classy...

In the UK, Siri has a male voice by default.

I'm more bothered by the fact that the name is three syllables. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Maybe deliberate to reduce false activations? Even with three, our Echo Dot triggers many times per day when nobody is talking to "her"!

Let me rephrase my suggestion for what to do here. Seems in the config.ini file, there is a setting for what you want the assistant's name to be:

[SYSTEM]

assistant_name = Stephanie

welcome_message = How may I help you?

wake_up_engine = False

wake_up_command = Stephanie wake up

I would presume you just replace Stephanie with whatever you want.

Personification of the assistant allows a more intimate experience for those not of the computer science inclination. Humans know how to talk to other humans, most are still too unfamiliar with speaking only to "a computer program at a data center somewhere" to get any real use out of it.

Anecdotal, but I have an aunt who hates computers but loves the Echo because of Alexa. By giving the assistant a name and speaking to it conversationally, she was able to "trust" it much faster than many other technologies.

>Personification of the assistant allows a more intimate experience for those not of the computer science inclination.

Fair enough. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I don't want anything I do with my phone to be described as an "intimate experience". Takes all kinds.

What's wrong with the trend?

The use of (nearly exclusively?) women's names and voices for servant roles? It continues a stereotype that I believe is problematic.

A woman's voice is not used due to it being a "servent". A woman's voice is used, because testing has shown both men and women respond positively to women's voices, while the same is not true of men's voices.

Of course, along with a women's voice, it makes sense to go along with a woman's name.

It can have a female voice without it having a woman's name; the "Google Assistant" is a good example. It's extremely off-putting that the only software we give human names to is the software we boss around, and when we do give it a name, the name is always female.

> It's extremely off-putting that the only software we give human names to is the software we boss around, and when we do give it a name, the name is always female.

That's not true though. Just a cursory glance at the Play Store with the search term "voice assistant"[0] reveals mostly gender neutral with some male and female. I "equalled" the female names and plussed the male names:

Dragon Mobile Assistant;

=Cortana – Digital assistant;

Indigo Virtual Assistant;

Smart Voice Assistant;

OK Google;

=Robin - AI Voice Assistant;

DataBot Assistant;

=EVA Free - Voice Assistant;

utter! Voice Commands BETA!;

voice Assistant;

+Jarvis - My Personal Assistant;

Google Allo;

Extreme: Personal Assistant;

=AIVC (Alice);

HOUND Voice Search & Assistant;

Google Now Launcher;

Genie;

=Amazon Alexa;

My Assistant;

Heaveen;

+SpeakBro;

+ANDY Voice Assistant (FREE);

Cyman Mark 2 Free;

+Noah Voice Assistant Beta;

My Android Assistant;

AVX Free - Voice Assistant;

Moto Voice;

+EVAN Free - Voice Assistant;

Voice Assistant;

Get Assistant - Root

Tally: 5 female and 5 male with 20 gender neutral including some arguable, e.g., "Cyman" (Simon?) and Robin. This isn't the most scientific thing but it certainly exposes the assertion "the name is always female" for what it is. The really unfortunate thing is this erroneous belief is so ingrained that half the comments here are bike shedding about this exact point instead of discussing how cool this piece of software is. Not that I'm helping that problem.

[0]https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/search_results...

> It can have a female voice without it having a woman's name;

Sure, you can use an unrelated word. There are many startups with silly names and that has not stopped them.

But if the creator decides to choose the name of a person, (perhaps to give their project a little humanity, or for whatever reason - it doesn't matter), and they are using a female voice, let us not pretend that a female name is not simply logical.

I've heard people complain that the combination of the female voice, and the naming of the Google service "assistant". There truly is no escape.

You can't give it a masculine name, because it would be nonsensical. You can't give it a feminine name because people will complain that you're associating femininity with subservience. You can't give it a descriptive name because people will complain that you're associating femininity with assistant/secretary work.

I think we're all better off if we just calm waaay down and accept that people like hearing feminine voices from programs with feminine names; and it just so happens that people want a piece of software which does secretary work.

I wonder whether people whould have enjoyed different kinds of male / androgynous voices. Soft voice? Energetic coffee-powered male voice to make us feel like businessmen during an MBA? Effeminate male voice because it would trigger sympathy? Masculine female voice because it mixes styles? Aged-man voice because it evokes wisdom? Grand-mother voice because it evokes good tips for life? Celebrity voices?

I concur that the initial female voice of Siri, Alexa and Cortana reminded me that all assistants shouldn't be women, and I believe future ones will match people's preference, so the only voices that will be universal will be those 3 voices, female and young.

How about an uptight british butler voice (Cogsworth from Disney's Beauty and the Beast) or the lovable lackey of evil voice (Pain and Panic from Disney's Hercules)?

There are plenty of male servant cliches: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ServantTropes

In the UK, Siri has a male voice with a posh English accent.

There are also a lot of "evil" male robots in popular culture.

Also, if Stephanie is a hot word and someone called Stephanie comes by...

elliot.ai

Yeah, I really don't want a voice assistant with the name of an ex.

Seriously? Then you should try Google since I believe no girl has OK GOOGLE name

But imagine the people who had the Google voice actress as an ex :O

Dating profile: I know this is a bit odd, but I can only date you if you're an iPhone user.

I dated the woman who did the voice for Google Voice (the voicemail service). She moved out to CA with me when my company got accepted to YC and she got a job at Google. I dunno exactly how she ended up doing the voice for it, but it's always been vaguely surreal to hear her answering my phone (I use Google Voice, and last I listened she was still the voice ~9 years later). It's not that big of a deal, more of a weird anecdote (that I've very rarely had occasion to tell before now) than anything traumatic.

Seems like a personal assistant voice would be kinda the same. Though maybe you hear it more often. But, it's probably not something that happens very often. I mean, how many personal assistant voices are there, and how many people can they have dated?

Don't personal assistant use voice synthesis rather than voice acting?

AFAIK, the state of the art in voice synthesis still involves concatenating recorded snippets. Even fancy neural networks need recordings to train on, and will most likely sound similar to the original voice actor.

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