∞ Siri's female voice raises questions

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CNN:

People describe the app using female pronouns. Her gender has even prompted some users to flood blogs and online forums with sexually suggestive questions for Siri such as “What are you wearing?” (Siri’s baffled response: “Why do people keep asking me this?”) The fuss over Siri’s sex also raises a larger question: From voice-mail systems to GPS devices to Siri and beyond, why are so many computerized voices female?

Siri isn’t universally female, either – Siri’s voice is male in its British and French implementations.

Apple, for its part, isn’t saying why Siri’s apparent gender assignment is as it is. But experts suggest that people are hard-wired to find female voices more pleasing than male voices, and many associate female voices with communication and relationships.



  • Anonymous

    I have also heard that female voices are easier to hear in high stress environments, i.e. airplane cockpits.

  • Nacho

    I consider Siri to be a butch lesbian. Gender problem solved!

  • Anonymous

    SVOX under Android gives you multiple female and male voices and many more languages.

    5 different voices in US language 2 for UK 2 Australian Chinese Portuguese (Brazilian or Portugal) Spanish (Spain or Mexico) French Russian Japanese Korean Arabic

    and a lot more.

    And you can modify the Pitch Accent, tonality speed to your liking.

    Siri can’t dream of this.

    • Anonymous

      Cool! If SVOX is available on a decent phone, let me know :-)

    • His Shadow

      Yes, because nothing Apple ever does gets updated, expanded or modied.

    • Anonymous

      Actually Siri very much can dream of it and will likely achieve it at some point. This is a less than 1 month old tech and Apple is more likely to focus on improving the system before adding more voices etc. Particularly to existing languages. 

    • Brett

      Except androids are shit

  • http://mangochut.net/ mangochutney

    I really don’t get what all the fuss is about. The only thing I need from a digitised voice, is to be audible and clear.

    I personally prefer the male voice Siri uses when set to British English.

    • http://www.yourmaclifeshow.com/ Shawn King

      There is no “fuss”. This is a completely made up story by CNN.

      Go back and read it again.

      CNN has no evidence of this fuss in the story – no links, no quotes, no stories, no….you know….FACTS….

      They add, “Until then, some bloggers have wondered: Are computerized female “assistants” sexist?” “Some bloggers”? Who are these bloggers? Where are they? Where are these people who think it’s sexist? Again – no links, no quotes, no stories, no….you know….FACTS….

      • http://mangochut.net/ mangochutney

        That’s what I meant with “fuss”. I couldn’t find any actual complaints or discussions about the pros and cons of a female voice for Siri.

        This was just a bad attempt to generate hits and from CNN at that.

  • http://twitter.com/LowTechAbuse Peter Gowen

    I just assumed it was a nod to Star Trek.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_N6OQITYG5QN57CTPO5XSOFVEXM Jim

    Aaah,  but really most devices use a woman’s voice because Men will listen because they are always being nagged by them…..LOL

    Interestingly, when using my Garmin devices I prefer the Female Australian Accent voice.  

    The british female voice is like listening to Nails on a blackboard akin to watching that scene in Jaws!   Sorry English Ladies….

    The American female voice is very much like listening to my ex wife!  I don’t want to hear the voice and switch off to it.

    The Male voices are kind of too much like having a beer buddy in the car,  you want to stop at ever bar that you drive past LOL

    My Built in GPS in the truck defaults to the Male voice and it only has a choice between American Male or American Female but neither are good.   In fact last time I used it the darn thing wanted to take me off road and over mountains and through desert and valley to get to San Diego Airport and then refused to actually go to the airport it wanted go it own merry way and tried to say that San Diego Int. Airport doesn’t exist.

    As for Siri,  I think of it as being an it.  Just like my GPS devices.  To give life to a device is the same as living an illusion,   then you get into those situations where you sit chatting to the device and playing with your doo dah……  

  • http://twitter.com/VGISoftware Daniel Swanson

    The CNN piece is ridiculous fluff pandering to the average “stimulus-response” mind, as evidenced by the 400+ “running off at the mind” comments it has elicited.

    The FACT is that SIRI is a machine–nothing more: NOT living, NOT capable and NEVER will be capable of ORIGINATING anything, capable ONLY of responding.

    This is not to say I don’t find SIRI fascinating. I do. But I also find other advanced machines fascinating—as well as USEFUL–in my daily life.

    I don’t care nearly as much about “gender” as I care about COMPETENCE: Can the mechanism (or being) do the job at hand, and how well? If the competence is there, the gender is relatively immaterial.

    On the other hand, I appreciate each gender for its respective qualities, and I celebrate those uniquenesses.

  • http://larkforsure.wordpress.com Yuan Yi Peng

    [ SOS ] Complaint about Human Rights Violations by IBM China on Centennial 

    Please Google:

    Tragedy of Labor Rights Repression in IBM China    or How Much IBM Can Get Away with is the Responsibility of the Media     or IBM detained mother of ex-employee on the day of centennials