Between Siri and Alexa, artificial intelligence has a strong preference for women. What is turning out to be a clear gender issue, stems from the fact that women appear to make objects more human. The “women’s touch” is what has motivated many producers to utilize female over male voices when building their intelligent products. The industry warns that if feminization in artificial intelligence continues, women may become more objectified in everyday life.

The widespread feminization of Artificial Intelligence

So why do women make artificial intelligence more human? Well, for starters women are generally seen as less threatening than men in our society. For this reason, female stranger’s voices are more welcomed than their male counterparts. Women are also perceived as giving off greater warmth and emotion, which is exactly what robots need to become more human.

Next to this, assistants and secretaries have traditionally been seen as female roles, so it’s unsurprising our technology helper’s would be female too. It comes down to the fact that women have historically been perceived as the gentler, kinder sex, which means many of us have an inborn preference for female technology helpers too.

Society’s belief women are more human

When examining 5 studies with over 3,000 participants regarding the humanization of artificial intelligence, some interesting results were revealed. Women were seen as more human than men in general, and female robots were not only seen as more human, but also as possessing more positive human qualities, like empathy and a service-oriented nature. This perceived humanness of female bots allows humans see artificial intelligence in a more positive light, which means companies logically prefer to utilize female over male bots

Preventing Artificial Intelligence’s gender bias in the future

Contrary to what one might believe, women becoming objects in artificial intelligence doesn’t stem from the fact that they are being objectified in the classic sense or seen as “sub-humans”. Quite the opposite-- they are seen as "superhuman." It’s exactly because of women's humanity, that artificial intelligence is endowed with female characteristics--to make artificial intelligencemore human.

So how do we move forward? Industry experts are looking into developing gender-neutral voices or establishing a default gender voice-- assigning equal numbers of male and female bots to customers. This way society will become accustomed to male voices. It really is about reprogramming our perception of men and their role in society.

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