Transcript
Mastodon posts by @trenchworms@eldritch.cafe:
super revealing of the misogyny inherent to the space that “AI assistants” stopped being given feminine-coded names the moment tech chuds thought they were developing higher levels of autonomy
“i TELL Alexa what to do. i COLLABROATE with Chudbot. i will not reflect on this hierarchy at all.”
Do the LLM chatbot things have “higher levels of autonomy” than the mobile voice assistants?
To a voice assistant: “Set my alarm for 7 AM.” “Start a 5 minute timer.” “Play Kind Of A Drag by the Buckinghams”
To an LLM: “Create a deepfake video of a public figure precisely supporting my political opinions.”
Here are my rules for avoiding companies/services based on name:
- No first names
- No “-ly”, “-ify”, or similar
- No baby talk
- No glossary terms
Follow these rules and you’ll avoid 90% of slop. Not specifically AI slop, human slop too.
They call the honest ones female names and the blatantly lying ones male names!
This is an extremely American English-centric take. The gendering of robot assistants varies widely across different cultures. It’s a heavily studied topic with lots written down for you to learn from. But you’re not intellectually curious, you’re just ignorant and want to make up pseudo-scientific crap to fit your preconceived biases.
Shitty way to say it, but you’re right. I used to work on mobile industrial robots, the sorts of machines that deliver parts in factories, clean rooms, semiconductor fabs, etc. These are industrial machines and have about as much gender as an office printer. We sold them in countries all over the world. At some point we added an off the shelf text to speech library so that to robots could communicate with non-technical people and say things like, “Excuse me” or “I’m lost”. It supported a bunch of languages and could use a male or female voice.
People in different countries had shockingly strong opinions about what gender the voice should have. The US, Canada, France and UK customers wanted them to be female. Germany and the Spanish speaking countries wanted male. Korea and China wanted male IIRC, but Japan insisted on female.
I’m sure this says something about the culture in all of those places, but I have no idea what.
American take: computer voices should be female because the higher pitch is easier to understand in an environment with any significant background noise.
Middle-aged guy take: Computer voices should be medium pitched because we’ve lost too much of our high pitched hearing due to concerts and working in noisy environments.
Grumpy middle-aged guy take: Computers shouldn’t talk to me. If I want get information from one, I’ll use a terminal like Turing intended.
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I mean I’ve seen Japanese porn too but women who aren’t pretending to have pixelated orgasms don’t speak that high pitched.
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Did Alan Turing live to see a terminal, or did the limeys Conservative him to death before the first interactive UI?
I think the first full terminal was the hard copy terminal for the Wirlwind 1 in 1956. So he missed it by two years. Fucking hell.
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A little aggressive in your point, but i do recall hearing of a study about this. Being nice to people goes a long way in getting people to be receptive to your argument.
You should smile more.
Wat. Link some studies please.
Um akshualy it’s spelled “Chodebot.”
I just called my Open Claw bot a cutesy animal name.
what are you using it for what’s your use case
I tried to make it do automated research, the OS was too buggy, the GATEWY was too buggy, and now the AGENT is too buggy, it had freaking dementia, and got very confused very fast, spammed me with tittles and summaries, did ZERO research.
So anyway, it’s now just something I might contact on Discord while at work, to search information for me, and message me covertyl.
I was really bad at setting it up I suppose, so it is really bad at it’s one purpose.
Compiling information autonomously and reliably.
The other thing I wanted was for it to run apps for me, since I could not use my hands so easily at work.
I’m tired of AI now, it’s literal only purpose is roleplay, to be a chewtoy for me to mess with.
COLLABROATE
It’s ‘collabroate’ when the oblique complement of the verb is masculine. It’s ‘collabriate’ when the complement is feminine.
This may be the first attestation of object gender agreement in English
Top level comments on the internet engage in a discussion of misogyny and patriarchy constructively and in good faith challenge:
My wife makes more money than me and I make the sandwiches. Suck it stereotypes
Jokes on you, when you divorce you’ll still end up paying her something.
Jokes on you, cooking is considered masculine in other cultures; you are just living up to the stereotypes. /nsrs
sandwiches can also be a paid skill, earning a lot of money in a sandwich truck in a major metropolis, but usually domestic skills like these are ignored and unpaid. what a shame.
If you’re not profit-maxing your sandwich making skills are you even living??
Is it blatant? This feels like they’re picking evidence to support the conclusion they already came to
Who has expressed the opinion in that quote they made up?
Siri, Bixby, Majel (Google Assistant), Cortana, Alexa… they are all female names and all had female voices at the beginning. I would say it’s blatant and it has been an ongoing topic of discussion as well.
Tbf, Cortana stems from a fictional AI that has far higher levels of autonomy. I don’t think it was chosen with “let’s find a good name for a limited AI interface” in mind.
It’s interesting you cite that article, because it was written in 2018 and presented feminist arguments that we should stop making AI assistants female-coded. Now that the industry has done that exact thing, it’s being criticized for it? It looks a lot of a case of damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Okay, imagine a company is being criticized because it only hires woman as secretaries.
So they change their policy to never hire women.
Kinda misses the point.
That analogy doesn’t even slightly work. AIs now are called ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Grok, Llama, Perplexity, Meta AI, DeepSeek… all genderless names. Only one, Claude, has a male name.
Replacing the secretaries with genderless chatbots still misses the point.
What is your point then?
Your analogy is falling apart even more since it’s now mixing up the idea of a real secretary being replaced with a bot except in the analogy the real secretary was also a bot…?
Honestly it reads like you just want to be offended.
In the analogy the secretary was gendered as a woman, and now it has been degendered as a bot.
Why did it happen that specific way? Perhaps they saw the criticism of all their bots having women’s names, but why was their solution to remove gendered names almost entirely? Why don’t we see a mix of men’s and women’s names, instead of only Claude?
Wasn’t Google Assistant named Iris at one point? Or was Iris a different thing that was announced, rolled out, and then canceled like basically everything else they’ve ever done?
Bixby is definitely more masculine than feminine. Samsung actually renamed it to Sam (and gave it a feminine avatar) when they made it smarter. Google Assistant was only called Majel internally and very briefly, as a reference to the voice of the Star Trek computer. Externally, it was always Google Assistant until it was replaced with Gemini. Alexa is still Alexa. Siri is still Siri. Cortana was replaced by Copilot. By my count, that’s one masc -> fem, one fem -> neutral, one neutral -> neutral, and two unchanged.
Point of order: Sam is gender neutral (we had a GirlSam and BoySam in our drama group in college, and GirlSam was there first (also won in the rock paper scissors to see who kept the name) so BoySam was BoySam and GirlSam was Sam unless we needed to be really specific in conversations)
Samsung’s Sam is not gender-neutral, however.
ah, that’s on them then
I’m torn on this because there definitely is a worrying increase in bigotry and tech bro culture, but at the same time OP’s “it’s so blatant once you notice it” could just as easily be “it’s so blatant once you’ve adopted confirmation bias enough to handwave away the exceptions”.
… This is not a made-up thought experiment though? We do have empirical data? Out of the five (5) companies mentioned in this thread, one (1) does not fit the pattern outlined in the OP. Seems pretty clear that something is going on. Unless you can point to some kind of sampling bias (by finding additional counterexamples), I don’t see how you can just chalk it up to confirmation bias.
Sure, it could all be coincidence, in the same way that maybe the dog really did eat my homework. Not a very convincing explanation.
Interestingly I never see this kilometric leeway given to tech companies when discussing, say, their technically unproven surveillance practices, which pretty much everyone readily accept as fact.
That so many people are fighting this particular point is inherently curious. For “some reason” accusations of misogyny require a much higher burden of proof than many other kinds of accusations, which is really more a reflection on the people debating this than on the tech companies themselves (which we already know are run by complete and utter human shitstains anyway).If I toss a coin 5 times and get 1H 4T, there’s not a journal on the planet that would accept that as proof that it was a loaded coin, not to mention that the 5 on the list were specifically selected to prove a point (or were Clippy, Microsoft Bob, and Google Now girls as well?); and even if we did accept it as a rule (even though it isn’t) it still doesn’t follow that there was misogynist intent driving it; that’s something you decided for yourselves.
which is really more a reflection on the people debating this
I’d throw that right back at you. People arguing in its support seem a lot more likely to look for secret misogynist motives in the person they’re talking to in order to support their argument by ad hominem.
The evidence is obviously if you decide on the conclusion before looking for it
Even if we accept your premise, and I am not sure I do, you are still ignoring that they all had female avatars to begin with. So none of them started masc or neutral even if you think the name was.
You and OP need to start doing at least a TINY bit of research before you make these claims because they’re verifiably wrong lol
It’s wild that you’re the most upvoted person in this thread when what you’re saying just isn’t true
Bixby’s only visual representation was a lowercase “b” in negative space on blue leaf/teardrop shape. S Voice was a microphone. It’s never had a humanoid avatar.
Siri’s was a handwritten “Siri” with a green circle for the dot on the “I”; after Apple bought it, it was a microphone and then an abstract blue/purple design. It’s never had a humanoid avatar.
Google Now wasn’t stand-alone and didn’t have any particular design - the button was a microphone in the Google palette. Google Assistant got an abstract set of circles in the Google palette. It’s never had a humanoid avatar.
So I guess we’re just talking about Cortana, unless I’ve missed any notable ones?
(Edit: Alexa didn’t have an avatar; the logo was a lowercase “alexa” in the Amazon style with the smirking Amazon arrow. Evi had a plain circle with a dot and an arc, like a cyclopean emoji. Ivona was a headless service.)
Which of them had avatars at all except Cortana (before) and Sam (after)?
That has nothing to do with what the post is saying, though. The claim is that techbros stopped using female names because they thought their AI could become sentient. And they’re using the “Voice assistants had female names” thing as “evidence”
Also, how many women named Bixby do you know of?
how many women named Bixby do you know of?
Same as the number of men: zero.
Doesn’t sound like a gendered name to me then
Agreed.
Also people absolutely tell ChatGPT and Grok and whatever what to do
Literally only one AI assistant Im aware of was given a feminine persona out the gate and thats Alexa which is Amazon’s.
Every single other one has been purposefully kept gender neutral.
They intentionally gave Siri a gender neutral name ages ago cuz you can pick what its voice sounds like
Same for gemini, copilot, gpt…
Only 1 out of many agents had a female name, and it wasnt “tech bros” that named it.
And only one tool has been given a male name, Claude
Siri’s default voice is female and all of the early advertising used that same female presentation.
Cortana was female.
I didn’t know if Google’s original voice assistant had a name, but it’s voice was also distinctly female — and still is, Google maps (and other android apps with voice assistance, probably) continues to use that same voice.
Cortana was female.
I pointed this out in another post but Cortana is also a “higher level” AI in her depiction origins (Halo) which is inherently a counterpoint to the OP’s post anyways…
Her depictions in Halo, sure. But the Cortana on your laptop wasn’t outsmarting ancient alien AIs or helping you murder hordes of genocidal aliens. She was there to make calendar appointments and search Amazon for the cheapest toilet paper. That’s a big fucking difference.
You… understand the Cortana on windows is literally named as a reference to Cortana from Halo right? Because Microsoft owns Halo…? They named it from her… So its the same “Cortana” so to say.
Its a fundamental counterpoint to the OPs post, because it wasn’t made feminine as some kind of mental gymnastics misogyny thing, its just a nerdy reference to an already existing character Microsoft had the rights to, its not that deep.
Siri is a girls name, though. In like ten different languages. It was the 12th most popular girls name in 2009, 2 years before Apple launched Siri in 2011. I understand that it was named for SRI, but it was still a feminine name.
The default voice is also fem
As someone who used dude-Siri when I still carried Apple hardware, people always asked why I changed it.
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Siri is definitely a gender neutral name, Ive literally met more dudes named Siri than gals when out traveling, especially in eastern Europe.
I know a guy named Aubrey, but what difference does that make? Apple named the product in the USA, where the masculine form of the name is extremely uncommon, especially since 2011. The name was chosen because it was a play on the SRI technology and because it is a girl’s name.
Also, Pinto means tiny penis in Brazil.
The name was chosen because it was a play on the SRI technology and because it is a girl’s name.
The name was actually chosen because it was originally going to be the name of one of the founder’s soon to be daughter, but then his child ended up being a son so he gave the name to the machine instead as his “second child” effectively…
So it had literally nothing to do with whatever point the poster was trying to make, and everything to do with a sense of paternal love if literally anything, lol… People will find literally fucking anything to mald over, even making shit up to try and make it sound right.
Oh yes I completely agree with you that the OP point is total horseshit. Things get named in the moment based on thousands of factors. Misogyny might be one of the influences in the moment, but I don’t believe there is a trend in the industry to avoid feminine names for AI products.
cortana was named after the video game AI, which was definitely depicted as female
Yeah but also is a heavy counterpoint to the point in the post, because Cortana was already a “higher level of autonomy” AI in her first depiction (Halo games), from the start, and Microsoft named it after the character because Microsoft bought Halo and was just doing a nod to the character… So thats literally an outright counterpoint to whatever mental gymnastics the poster of the post was doing…
In my experience, GPS voices also tend to be feminine by default.
I think it’s less true now than it once was, but I remembering hearing somewhere that pre-recorded messages on trains/subways/in stations tend to use feminine voices for information, and masculine voices for instructions.
There are definitely still times on the London Underground where you’ll hear announcements that switch in the middle, and that does usually seem to be the pattern.
(I realise this doesn’t really apply to GPSes, but your comment is what reminded me, so. 😅)
Defs true for NSW, Australia railways
Man says “smoking is not permitted”, woman says “the next station is foo”
I first noticed as a child and it is one of the first times I remember thinking that society wants women to be servile.
It has been studied that people respond better for gendered voices in those contexts, but yeah that’s probably because it’s been preprogrammed into people. It’s weird when you notice it in the wild.
Not preprogrammed, because patriarchy
Yeah sorry I wasn’t clear enough, when I say preprogrammed I don’t mean innate human behaviour, I mean societal conditioning over the entire lifespan of a person.
Ah, fair enough.
I had my hackles up 'cause some people like pretend that gender roles/perception are somehow encoded in our DNA
but I remembering hearing somewhere that pre-recorded messages on trains/subways/in stations tend to use feminine voices for information, and masculine voices for instructions.
Dunno if this is still the case, but this was definitely true of the subway system in NYC when I lived there.
Female voice: the next stop is [x] street
Male voice: stand clear of the closing doors!
Also, Gemini is decidedly masculine, as it refers to the male twins Castor and Pollux, the plural of the latin geminus.
Etymology is not the same as meaning.
True. But the meaning is the constellation, and the star sign, which means twins.
It doesn’t have a masculine connotation in modern use, though.
And Alexa was named after the library of Alexandria
Also because the “x” sound was easier to identify than EVA or IVONA.
Does Bixby count?
It counts as an assistant, and its a gender neutral name cuz its a place name, not a person name.
Its name was specifically chosen to be weird and different to avoid the “accidently triggers in common convo” problem that other assistants tend to have
But ma feminist rage!
Purely an anecdote, but one of my colleagues refers to the robot as “Claudette”. I insist on not giving it a gender or anthropomorhising it, it’s an it, and I’ll keep misgendering/deadnaming the robot forever.
I call it clod. That’s gender neutral.
I feel you. I definitely feel the Skynet/HAL route is more appropriate. I’ve started modifying my prompts to make sure the LLM does not sound like a person. How they try to be all friendly, flattering etc is so irksome.
I work with a lady who calls ChatGPT Chattiana and says she’s her best friend. Decent wordplay, terrible way to live
That’s quite sad. I hope their joking :(
Correlation is not causation.
