The document discusses Apple changing Siri's default voice from female to gender-neutral in response to criticism of gender bias. While an important step, the change does not address other issues like biased language models Siri was trained on or lack of diversity among its developers. True progress requires Apple and other companies to prioritize eliminating bias from virtual assistants and increase gender diversity in their workforce.

1. Has feminism won a
victory here, Siri? Apple's
default voice is no longer
female

2. As of March 31, 2021, when Apple
launched the iOs 14.Five beta replace to
its running gadget, Siri not defaults to a
female voice when the usage of American
English. Users ought to now pick out
among two male and two lady voices while
permitting the voice assistant. This move
may be interpreted as a response to the
backlash in opposition to the gender bias
embodied by using Siri
But how significant is this variation simply?
Siri has been criticized as embodying
numerous sides of gender bias in artificial
intelligence. Digital sociologists Yolande
Strengers and Jenny Kennedy argue that
Siri, along with different voice assistants
which includes Amazon Alexa and Google
Home, had been developed with the
intention to “perform ‘wifework’ — domestic

3. duties which have historically fallen on
(human) other halves.”
Siri became firstly simplest voiced as
female and programmed to now not best
carry out “wifely” duties such as checking
the climate or setting a morning alarm, but
additionally to reply flirtatiously. The use of
sexualized terms by means of Siri has
been notably documented by using
hundreds of YouTube motion pictures with
titles along with “Things You Should
NEVER Ask SIRI” (which has greater than
18 million perspectives).
AppleInsider reviews Siri’s new voices.
Dated gender references
Apple has been criticized as selling a
sexualized and stereotypical picture of
women that negatively harms gender

4. norms. A 2019 research with the aid of The
Guardian exhibits that Apple wrote internal
guidelines in 2018 asking builders to have
Siri deflect mentions of feminism and other
“sensitive topics.” It’s no longer clear what
the hints have been for hard-coding flirty
comebacks.
The language used by Siri turned into (and
still is) a combination of an already
stereotypical language model, together
with jokes hard coded via builders. A 2016
evaluation of famous language fashions
used by software groups referred to that
word institutions have been fantastically
stereotypical. In the examine, phrases
such as truth seeker and captain have
been gendered male, whilst the other
changed into true for terms including
homemaker.

5. Legal pupil Céline Castets-Renard and I
have been reading language models
utilized by Google Translate and Microsoft
Bing that have revealed comparable
troubles. We input gender-neutral terms in
romanized Mandarin into the translation
structures, forcing the translation
algorithms to pick out the gender in English
and French. Without exception, the Google
algorithm decided on male and lady
pronouns along stereotypical gender
traces. The Microsoft algorithm,
conversely, completely decided on male
pronouns.
The use of models inclusive of these in
Siri’s set of rules might provide an
explanation for why, while you type in any
corporate identify (leader govt officer,
leader monetary officer, and so forth.), a
male emoji would be proposed. While this
has due to the fact that been addressed —

6. in all likelihood due to criticism — inside
the contemporary iOS, if Siri is asked to
retrieve a image of a captain or a
programmer, the pix served up are still a
sequence of guys.
Friendly and flirty
The idea of the flawlessly flirtatious virtual
assistant inspired Spike Jonze’s 2013 film
Her, in which the male protagonist falls in
love along with his virtual assistant. But it’s
tough to imagine how biased language
models ought to cause a virtual assistant to
flirt with customers.
This seems likely to have been intentional.
In the 2013 film ‘Her,’ a divorced couple
confront intimacy and virtuality.
In reaction to these criticisms, Apple
progressively removed a number of the

7. extra flagrant tendencies, and apparently
difficult coded away some of the more
offensive responses to person questions.
This changed into completed without
making too many waves. However, the
report of YouTube movies shows Siri
turning into step by step less gendered.
One of the remaining ultimate criticisms
become that Siri had a girl voice, which
remained the default despite the fact that a
male voice become also provided as an
option in view that its 2011 release. Now,
users should decide for themselves in the
event that they need a lady or a male
voice.
Users don’t recognize, but, the language
model that the virtual assistant is skilled
on, or whether or not there are still legacies
of flirty Siri left inside the code.

8. Bias is greater than voice-deep
Companies like Apple have a large
responsibility in shaping societal norms. A
2020 National Public Media file discovered
that in the pandemic, the range of
Americans using virtual assistants
multiplied from forty six to fifty two
consistent with cent, and this trend will best
continue.
What’s greater, many human beings have
interaction with virtual assistants brazenly
of their home, this means that that biased
AIs regularly interact with youngsters and
may skew their own notion of human
gender members of the family.
Removing the default girl voice in Siri is
vital for feminism in that it reduces the
immediately association of Siri with ladies.
On the other hand, there's also the

9. possibility of using a gender-neutral voice,
which includes the only launched in 2019
by a collection led via Copenhagen Pride.
The Conversation emblem
Changing Siri’s voice doesn’t address
issues related to biased language
fashions, which don’t need a girl voice for
use. It also doesn’t cope with hiring bias
within the company, where ladies best
make up 26 consistent with cent of
leadership roles in studies and
improvement.
If Apple is going to continue quietly doing
away with gender bias from Siri, there is
still pretty a piece of work to do. Rather
than making small and gradual changes,
Apple must take the problem of gender
discrimination head on and distinguish
itself as a leader.

10. Allowing large quantities of the population
to have interaction with biased AI threatens
to opposite latest advances in gender
norms. Making Siri and other virtual
assistants absolutely bias-unfastened
ought to consequently be an instantaneous
priority for Apple and the opposite software
giants.
Curtis Hendricks, Data Science Consultant,
contributed to the authorship of this
article.The Conversation
Eleonore Fournier-Tombs, Adjunct
Professor, Accountable AI, L’Université
d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
This article is republished from The
Conversation under a Creative Commons
license. Read the original article.