Sexy Siri

SexySiri

THE SEXUALIZATION OF AI AND ROBOTS By Gabrielle Gronewold, Culture Editor Graphic by Mac Gale

Siri, now a household name, is the Apple Inc. virtual assistant that emerged in 2011 with the Apple iPhone 4’s release. Founded by a group in Norway and named after a co-founders co-worker, Siri means “beautiful woman who leads you to victory.”1 Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant announced in 2014, was inspired by the computer voice and conversational system voiced by Majel Barrett Roddenberry in the science fiction Startrek TV and film series.2

In fact, most media depictions of AI and robots, like that found in Startrek, are gendered female. The troupe is so popular that female gendered humanoid robots have a name — gynoids. From Eve in Wall-E,3 Samantha in Her, The Fembots from Austin Powers the Buffybot from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there is an overwhelming presence of gynoids — in both the technologies we view and use. But why? Clifford Naas, a professor at Stanford University and humanmachine response researcher, has shown that there is a preference for female voices within humans, “It’s a wellestablished phenomenon that the human brain is developed to like female voices.” Also present is a slight gender bias in which each gender also prefers their own gender’s voice, but overwhelmingly a gendered female voice is perceived well.4 This explains in part why companies like Apple and

1 Yoni Heisler, “Steve Jobs wasn’t a fan of the Siri name,” Network World, March 8, 2012. 2 Penelope Green, “Alexa, Where Have You Been All My Life?” The New York TImes, July 11, 2018. 3 Brittany Long, “Creating Gender in Disney/Pixar’s WALL-E” East Tennessee State University, May, 2011. 4 Brandon Griggs, ‘Why computer voices are mostly female,” CNN, October 21, 2011.