towards a genderless voice assistant

[hitchhiker]

https://www.fastcompany.com/90321378/the-worlds-first-genderless-ai-voice-is-here-listen-now

To develop Q, creators Emil Asmussen and Ryan Sherman from Virtue Nordic sampled several real voices from non-binary people, combined them digitally, and created one master voice that cruises between 145 Hz and 175 Hz, right in a sweet spot between male- and female-normative vocal ranges.

To the developers, it was important that Q wasn’t just designed as non-binary, but actually perceived by users as non-binary, too. So through development, the voice was tested on more than 4,600 people identifying as non-binary from Denmark, the U.K., and Venezuela, who rated the voice on a scale of 1 to 5–1 being “male” and 5 being “female.” They kept tuning the voice with more feedback until it was regularly rated as being gender-neutral.

Comments

[pauamma]

Hmm. The excerpt you quoted seems to equate "non-binary" with "genderless" or "gender-neutral", but I'm not sure that's warranted.

[hitchhiker]

it's probably the best they could do, though!

[zahraa]

We should have this thing. I have had Duolingo correct me when I used a feminine adjective for a voice that clearly sounded female to me, and when I've filed a report, had them write back to me saying it's a computer and it's genderless and so it should be masculine. %-(

[pauamma]

Which language was that, IYDMMA?

[zahraa]

Portuguese.

[cjsmith]

It’s about stinking time that assistants stopped being female by default. Hats off to this team.

(“If ‘all men are born free’, how is it that all women are born into servitude?” - I don’t remember who right now. British feminist.)